BV  2060  .T6  1851 
Thompson,  Joseph  Parrish, 

1819-1879. 
John  Foster  on  missions 


JOHN  "eOSTER 


MISSIONS: 


In  feaif, 


SKEPTICISM  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


JOSEPH    P.    THOMPSON, 

PASTOR  OF  THE  BROADWAY  TABERNACLE  CHURCH. 


NEW    YORK: 

EDWARD     H.     FLETCHER, 

1851. 


Eiitrred,  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  }-ear  It'A,  by 

EDWARD    II.   FLETCHER, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  Distrirt  Court  lor  the  Southern  District  of 
New  York. 


SXEUEOTVPED  BV  BANIJZI  AND  TALMKK. 


PRELIMINARY   ESSAY. 


In  September  1818,  Mr.  Foster  delivered  before 
the  Baptist  Missionary  Society  a  discourse  on  Mis- 
sions, which,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  his  Es- 
say on  Popular  Ignorance,  was  regarded  by  his  friends 
and  by  cotemporaneous  reviewers  as  his  greatest  in- 
tellectual effort.  Mr.  Foster  himself  speaks  of  this 
Discourse  as  '*a  thing  of  very  great  labor  ;"^''  and  in  a 
letter  to  his  old  friend  and  instructor,  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Hughes,  respecting  the  third  edition,  he  says,  "  Very 
great  pains  have  been  taken  with  the  *  Discourse' 
part  of  the  book  ;  and  I  am  disposed  to  account  the 
last  paragraph  in  the  volimae  about  the  most  success- 
ful sample  of  amendment  in  the  whole  of  it.  *  * 
How  many  hours  of  the  utmost  effort  of  my  mind  it 
cost  to  put  the  paragraph  into  its  present  form! 
What  an  effort  to  reduce  the  wide,  and  remote,  and 
*  Life  and  Correspondence,  vol.  ii.  p.  4 


6  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

shadowy  element  of  the  thought  to  what,  I  am  will- 
ing to  beheve,  is  now  a  definite  expression.  *''  *  Dur- 
ing a  life  which,  I  acknowledge  with  regret,  has 
been  on  the  whole  a  very  indolent  one,  I  have  never 
before  made  a  mental  exertion  that  has  at  all  sensibly 
affected  my  health ;  but  this  last  has  done  so.  The 
confinement  has  been  almost  complete."* 

These  facts  are  the  more  important  to  be  noticed 
here,  because  later  in  life  Mr  Foster,  in  a  critique 
upon  the  Rev.  Dr.  Harris's  celebrated  work,  ''The 
Great  Commission,"  alluded  to  the  missionary  enter- 
prise in  terms  of  distrust  and  even  of  disparagement, 
and  thus  gave  to  the  opposers  of  evangelical  missions 
and  evangelical  religion  the  sanction  of  his  great  name 
and  the  authority  of  his  latest  opinions,  l^o  better 
refutation  of  the  argument  of  his  letter  to  Dr.  Harris 
can  be  given  than  is  contained  in  the  Missionary 
Discourse  from  Mr.  Foster's  own  pen.  That  dis- 
course was  written  in  the  maturity  of  his  intellect,  and 
was  justly  regarded  by  himself  as  one  of  the  greatest 
and  most  successful  efforts  of  his  life.  The  letter  to 
Dr.  Hams  was  written  in  old  age  ;  an  old  age  render- 
ed gloomy  and  morose  by  seclusion  from  the  world, 
*  Life  and  Correspondence,  vol.  ii.  pp.  24,  26. 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  i 

and  by  tlie  failure  of  some  of  the  schemes  and  pre- 
dictions of  earlier  and  more  ardent  years,  and  Avhen, 
from  a  variety  of  causes,  he  had  fallen  under  the  par- 
alyzing influence  of  his  necessarian  philosophy.  In- 
deed, in  this  very  letter,  Mr.  Foster  says,  "  You  will 
not  wonder  if  a  man  dried  and  chilled  by  seventy 
years,  addicted  through  experience,  if  not  somewhat 
given  by  temperament,  to  somber  meditations  ;  com- 
pelled to  look  much  on  the  dark  side,  presented,  as  it 
is,  in  immensely  greater  breadth,  in  history  and  the 
actual  state  of  the  world,  than  the  bright  one,  should 
think  he  perceives  [in  that  book]  a  pervading  tone  of 
exaggeration." 

These  facts  will  suffice  to  counteract  the  authority 
of  Mr.  Foster's  letter  to  Dr.  Harris,  while  the  repub- 
lication of  the  Missionary  Discourse  will  serve  to  coun- 
teract the  argument  of  that  letter.  In  the  thorough- 
ness of  its  discussion  and  the  comprehensiveness  of  its 
view ;  in  the  clearness  and  strength  of  its  reasoning 
and  the  force  and  beauty  of  its  diction  ;  in  the  glow 
of  its  sentiment  and  the  sublimity  of  its  faith,  this 
discourse  stands  at  the  head  of  productions  of  its  class 
as  an  exhibition  of  the  grandeur  of  the  work  of  mis- 
sions and  of  the  imperative  claims  of  that  work  upon 


8  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

the  Church  of  Christ.  There  is  in  it  nothing  local 
or  temporary ;  but  it  comes  to  Christians  of  this  gen- 
eration with  all  the  freshness  and  power  which 
thirty  years  ago  attended  its  delivery.  It  may  seem 
presumptuous  to  attempt  to  detain  the  reader  from 
the  perusal  of  such  a  discourse,  by  a  preliminary  es- 
say from  a  pen  so  inadequate  to  its  high  theme.  And 
yet,  as  the  name  and  influence  of  John  Foster  have 
been  industriously  arrayed  against  his  true  character 
and  faith,  and  against  a  cause  which  to  the  end  of  life 
he  loved  ;  and  as  the  state  of  mind  evinced  in  his  let- 
ter to  Dr.  Harris  is  but  a  type  of  views  and  feelings 
at  least  latent  in  many  minds — a  state  of  skepticism 
in  relation  to  the  missionary  enterprise  as  now  pros- 
ecuted by  the  Church — it  has  seemed  to  the  writer 
that  a  re-statement  of  the  argument  for  missions,  in 
the  light  of  such  queries  and  objections,  might  form 
an  introduction  not  wholly  inappropriate  to  this  great 
discourse.  "* 

The  great  work  which  Christ  has  committed  to  His 
disciples — the  evangelization  of  the  world — has  been 
strangely  delayed.    It  was  prosecuted  Avith  ^^gor  dur- 

*  The  substance  of  this  Essay  appeared  in  the  Biblical 
Repository  for  July,  1848. 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  9 

ing  the  first  three  centuries  :  the  gospel  was  carried 
into  Armenia,  Iberia,  Arabia,  Persia,  and  even  India 
in  the  East ;  into  Etliiopia  and  other  parts  of  Africa  ; 
into  Gaul  and  Britain  in  the  West.  But  this  primitive 
zeal  in  propagating  the  gospel  declined  as  Christian- 
ity became  corrupted,  and  as  the  Church  was  convert- 
ed into  a  vast  hierarchical  organization,  and  eventually 
allied  itself  with  the  civil  power.  True,  the  numerical 
strength  and  the  area  of  Christendom  continued  to  in- 
crease. The  downfall  of  the  Roman  Emphe  brought 
Christianity  and  civihzation  into  contact  with  the  tribes 
of  the  North,  and  several  of  the  German  nations  be- 
came nominally  Christian.  Even  during  the  dark  ages 
nominal  Christianity  continued  to  spread,  chiefly  in 
the  North  of  Europe  ;  occasionally,  as  in  Russia  in  the 
eleventh  century,  it  was  inaugurated  as  the  religion  of 
the  state ;  and  the  Church  became  at  length  the  great 
central  power  of  the  world.  Here  and  there  tlie  pure 
gospel  was  kept  alive ;  now  and  then  a  sincere  and 
devoted  missionary  would  go  forth  and  labor  in  the 
spirit  of  primitive  times  ;  but  this  long  period  witness- 
ed mainly  but  the  enlargement  of  the  nominal  Church, 
and  the  extension  of  an  ecclesiastical  corporation  ;  by 
no  means  the  thorough  evangeUzing  of  the  world — 
1* 


10  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

much  less  the  conversion  of  mankind  to  the  faith  and 
obedience  of  the  gospel.  The  sixteenth  century  was 
the  age  of  reformation ;  its  powerful  agitations  were 
confined  within  the  pale  of  Christendom ;  its  work 
was  renovation,  not  aggression  ;  although  the  Romish 
Church,  Aveakened  in  many  parts  of  Europe,  embark- 
ed in  various  "  projects  of  hierarchical  ambition"  in 
pagan  lands.  Loyola  stands  pre-eminent  as  a  model 
of  missionary  zeal.  The  seventeenth  century  wit- 
nessed occasional  incipient  missionary  movements 
among  the  Swiss,  the  Dutch,  the  Swedes,  the  British, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  North  American  Colonies, 
which  were  rather  the  quickening  of  the  Church  into 
life  than  the  activity  of  life  itself.  The  last  century 
gave  birth  to  numerous  missionary  associations,  and 
reduced  to  system  the  work  of  evangelizing  the  world, 
then  distinctly  recognized  as  a  Christian  duty.  The 
present  century  has  carried  out  that  system  with  in- 
creased zeal  and  energy,  and  on  an  enlarged  scale  ; 
has  miUtiplied  benevolent  associations  and  the  means 
of  prosecuting  the  work  of  missions,  and  has  estab- 
lished that  work  in  the  hearts  of  Christians  as  the 
great  enterprise  of  the  Church.  There  are  now  in 
Protestant  Christendom  upward  of  twenty  principal 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  11 

foreign  missionary  societies  or  boards  (exclusive  of 
district,  local,  and  auxiliary  associations),  whose  an- 
nual income  exceeds  $3,000,000  ;  whose  missionaries, 
numbering  nearly  2000,  occupy  1400  stations,  em- 
ploy fifty  printing  estabhshments,  and  about  5000  na- 
tive and  other  assistants ;  while  the  missions  combined 
exhibit  some  200,000  converts  in  Christian  commu- 
nion, and  a  still  greater  number  of  children  and  adults 
in  schools.* 

Now  all  this  is  high-sounding  and  seems  like  pro- 
gress. It  seems  as  if  the  Church  had  indeed  resolved 
to  make  the  missionary  enterprise  "  the  glory  of  the 
age,"  and  to  bring  it  to  a  speedy  consummation. 
Relatively,  there  has  been  progress — rapid,  great,  and 
encouraging  ;  and  yet  the  evangelizing  of  the  world, 
rightly  viewed,  is  to  be  looked  upon  rather  as  a  work 
which  has  been  and  yet  is  retarded,  than  as  a  work 
progressing  rapidly  toward  completion;  as  a  work 
which  ouQfht  lon^  since  to  have  been  done,  but  which 
has  been  and  yet  is  unworthily  delayed.  How  strange 
that  after  1800  years,  with  the  known  will  of  Christ 
that  His  gospel  should  be  everywhere  proclaimed,  and 

*  These  statistics  are  necessarily  imperfect ;  they  are  chief- 
ly derived  from  Hoole's  "  Year  Book  of  Missions." 


12  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

with  the  faculties  afforded  in  every  age  for  doing 
that  work,  it  should  still  be  true  that  the  world — 
the  great  preponderating  mass  of  earth's  inhabitants — 
"lieth  in  wickedness,"  that,  in  the  eloquent  language 
of  Foster,  Christianity,  after  "  laboring  in  a  difficult 
progress  and  very  limited  extension,  and  being  per- 
verted from  its  purpose  into  darkness  and  superstition 
for  a  period  of  a  thousand  years,  is  at  the  present 
hour  known,  and  even  nominally  acknowledged  by 
very  greatly  the  minority  of  the  race,  the  mighty 
mass  remaining  prostrate  under  the  infernal  dominion 
of  which  countless  generations  of  their  ancestors  have 
been  the  slaves  and  victims — a  deplorable  majority  of 
the  people  in  the  Christian  nations  strangers  to  the 
vital  power  of  Christianity,  and  a  large  proportion  di- 
rectly hostile  to  it,  while  its  progress  in  the  work  of 
conversion,  in  even  the  most  favored  part  of  the  world, 
is  distanced  by  the  progressive  increase  of  the  popula- 
tion."* Such  a  picture  is  widely  different  from  that 
scene  of  millennial  glory  which  many  have  supposed 
was  about  to  be  ushered  in.  A  little  cool  arithmetic 
will  suffice  to  dispel  the  dream  of  the  conversion  of 
the  world  in  our  generation,  and  to  show  us  that,  *'  at 
•  Letter  to  Dr.  Harris.    Life  and  Correspondence,  vol.  ii. 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  13 

the  rate  of  the  progress  hitherto  of  genuine  Christian- 
ity on  the  globe,  thousands  of  years  may  pass  away 
before  that  millennium  can  arrive."  The  work  is  not 
yet  finished  ;  the  work  is  only  yet  begun.  Not  yet 
is  Immanuel  satisfied  with  the  fruit  of  His  travail ;  not 
yet  has  He  accomplished  that  which  He  has  purposed 
to  do  through  His  redeemed  Church.  But  when  we 
consider  the  earnestness  of  His  command,  the  large- 
ness of  His  promise,  the  wisdom  and  the  munificence 
of  His  arrangements,  and  the  intensity  of  His  desires, 
in  respect  to  the  conversion  of  the  world,  we  can  find 
a  solution  of  the  painful  mystery  of  its  delay  only  in 
some  supposed  restraint  on  Divine  influence,  some  hin- 
drance on  the  part  of  those  who  are  commissioned  to 
fulfill  the  mighty  plan. 

The  kingdom  of  Christ  has  been  retarded  in  va- 
rious ways  by  the  social  and  political  condition  of  the 
world.  And  yet  Christianity  would  have  proved  it- 
self, ere  this,  to  be  the  great  reforming  power  in  the 
political  and  the  social  institutions  of  men  had  not  its 
influence  been  crippled  and  arrested  by  some  other 
cause  than  those  institutions  themselves.  The  full 
power  of  Christianity,  m  opposition  to  all  false  sys- 
tems of  religion,  of  government,  and  of  social  organi- 


14  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

zation,  has  not  yet  been  proved ;  for  tlie  condition  of 
the  exercise  of  that  power,  namely,  a  hvely  Christian 
fciitli,  imparting  vitality  and  efficiency  to  the  appoint- 
ed instrument  of  the  work,  has  not  been  fulfilled  on 
the  part  of  the  Church.  The  2'>t'cvalence  of  skeiUtcism 
in  the  Church  in  res^yect  to  the  facts  and  jmnciples  on 
lohich  the  work  of  missions  proceeds,  is,  in  our  judr/- 
ment,  the  main  hindrance  to  the  immediate  evanr/eliza- 
tion  of  the  world. 

There  are  several  fundamental  facts  involved  in  the 
missionary  enterprise,  in  respect  to  which  there  is  a 
prevailing  skepticism  in  the  Church. 

1.  There  is  much  skejoticism  in  the  Church,  with  re- 
spect to  the  actual  condition  of  the  heathen  world. 
That  the  heathen  are,  for  the  most  part,  in  a  state  of 
deep  moral  and  social  degradation,  is  beginning  to  be 
generally  understood.  Their  true  condition  was  long 
hidden  from  the  Christian  world.  Mere  secular  trav- 
elers gave  us  entertaining  accounts  of  the  manners 
and  customs  of  diflferent  nations,  with  occasional  out- 
lines of  their  philosophical  tenets  or  their  religious  be- 
lief, and  sketches  of  their  sacred  places  and  their  insti- 
tutions and  modes  of  worship ;  but  they  seldom  de- 
scribed the  general  state  of  morals,  or  held  up  to  repro- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  15 

bation  their  prevailing  vices  and  crimes.  Commercial 
i-esidents  in  heathen  lands  have  comparatively  little  op- 
portunity of  learning  the  moral  characteristics  of  the 
people.  They  go  there  for  a  single  object,  the  pur- 
pose of  gain ;  they  seldom  contemplate  a  permanent 
residence ;  tliey  have  little  intercourse  with  the  na- 
tives, except  in  the  -vvay  of  trade ;  tliey  commonly  ac- 
quire but  a  superficial  knowledge  of  the  language,  the 
hterature,  the  religion,  and  the  morals  of  the  country. 
It  was  not  till  Christian  missionaries,  ordinarily  men 
of  intelligence  as  well  as  of  veracity,  went  among  the 
heathen,  that  the  moral  state  of  the  world  became 
truly  known.  Reports  made  by  men  w^ho  were  not 
writing  for  amusement,  reputation,  or  profit,  and  who 
had  no  personal  interest  to  subserve  by  misrepresent- 
ation ;  by  men  accustomed  to  the  study  of  character, 
and  conversant  with  the  morality  of  the  Bible ;  men 
having  an  eye  to  detect  and  a  soul  to  abhor  every 
form  of  depravity  ;  the  reports  of  such  witnesses  dis- 
closed to  us  a  state  of  moral  degradation  among  the 
heathen  of  which  we  had  not  before  conceived.  And 
though  this  testimony  has  been  occasionally  contra- 
dicted, by  transient  visitors  and  superficial  observers, 
J)y  parties  interested  in  the  continuance  of  the  present 


16  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

state  of  tilings,  and  by  those  whose  moral  sense  is  so 
obtuse  that  vice  to  them  seems  virtue,  yet  it  is  so 
abundantly  confirmed  by  many  independent  witnesses, 
that  the  deep  moral  debasement,  the  revolting  pollu- 
tion of  tlie  heatlien  world,  has  come  to  be  regarded  as 
an  awful  fact.  There  is  little  if  any  doubt  on  that 
2)oint,  among  well-informed  persons  in  our  day. 

The  apostle  Paul,  in  the  opening  chapter  of  his 
Epistle  to  the  Romans,  enumerates  twenty-two  differ- 
ent forms  of  wickedness,  many  of  them  exceedingly 
gross,  which  were  pi-evalent  among  the  heathen  of  his 
time.  The  accuracy  of  his  delineation  is  confirmed  by 
cotemporaneous  history  and  literature,  and  by  the 
monuments  of  profligacy  and  lust  exhumed  from  the 
ruins  of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii.  Tholuck  has  fur- 
nished us  with  the  most  sickening  details  of  the  de- 
pravity of  ancient  civilized  Greece  and  Rome ;  and 
modern  missionaries  to  India  and  other  idolatrous 
countries,  assure  us  that  this  same  first  chapter  of  Ro- 
mans, Avhich  can  hardly  be  read  in  a  Christian  assem- 
bly, certainly  not  with  appropriate  exposition  and 
illustration,  is  an  exact  description  of  the  state  of  the 
lieathen  in  our  OAvn  time,  and  is  recognized  as  such 
by  the  more  intelligent  and  honest  among  the  heathen 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  Vl 

themselves.  Says  one,*  "  I  have  read  this  tremen- 
dous catalogue  to  assemblies  of  Hindoos,  showing  from 
facts  which  both  they  and  I  knew,  that  each  of  these 
sins  belongs  in  a  high  degree  to  their  national  charac- 
ter. I  have  asked  the  heathen  themselves,  whether 
the  crimes  enumerated  by  the  apostle  were  not  their 
national  characteristics.  Never,  that  I  remember,  did 
I  fail  to  hear  them  confess  that  such  was  the  case." 

Testimony  like  this  is  so  abundant,  that  the  moral 
degradation  of  the  heathen  may  well  be  regarded  as 
an  established  fact. 

But  while  it  is  acknowledged  that  the  heathen  are 
thus  degraded,  it  is  not  so  generally  felt  that  their 
degradation  is  the  result  of  their  own  willful  apostasy 
from  God ;  that  they  are  guilty,  responsible  beings, 
under  the  condemnation  of  the  law  of  God,  and  in 
danger  of  eternal  misery.  Many  look  upon  the  hea- 
then as  comparatively  safe ;  more  likely  to  be  saved 
without  the  gospel  than  with  it;  inasmuch  as  the 
knowledge  of  the  gospel  would  (they  think)  only  bring 
them  into  a  state  of  accountability,  from  w^hich,  through 
involuntary  ignorance,  they  are  now  exempt;  and 
they  affirm,  that  a  benevolent  Deity  will  not  con- 
*  Rev.  Mr.  Eckard. 


18  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

demn  such  ignorant  and  helpless  creatures,  in  the  day 
of  final  retribution. 

Such  vicAvs  and  feelins^s  are  at  least  latent  in  the 
minds  of  many  Christians.  •  They  are  to  be  traced 
1^  partly  to  a  defective  ^iew  of  the  nature  of  human  de- 
pravity, and  partly  to  a  morbid  state  of  the  sensibilities, 
leading  to  a  superficial  view  of  the  benevolence  of  God. 
If  the  heathen  are  held  accountable  for  their  moral 
state,  we  admit  that  it  must  be  on  the  score  of  their 
willful  disobedience  to  known  law.  We  do  not  pretend 
that  they  will  be  judged  by  the  revealed  law,  but  by 
the  light,  if  any,  which  they  really  have — by  the  law, 
if  any,  written  on  their  hearts.  There  can  be  no 
moral  depravity  where  there  is  no  accountability ; 
and  there  can  be  no  accountability  where  there 
is  neither  the  knowledf^e  of  the  moral  law  nor  the 
power  to  know  and  to  keep  the  moral  law.  But  it  is 
claimed  that  the  heathen  have  no  means  of  knowing 
their  duty,  and  that  their  depravity  is,  not  their  crime, 
but  their  misfortune.  They  are  said  to  be  "  car- 
ried on  in  the  mighty  impulse  of  a  depraved  nature, 
which  they  are  impotent  to  reverse,"*     and,  there- 

*  John  Foster ;  letter  to  Dr.  Harris.     Life  and  Corre- 
spondence, vol.  ii. 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  19 

fore,  to  be  devoid  of  responsibility.  If  so,  the  best 
security  for  the  future  happiness  of  mankind  hes  in 
the  ignorance  and  gloom  of  heathenism,  and  the  pos- 
session of  the  gospel  is  a  calamity  and  a  curse  to  any 
of  the  race.  It  will,  therefore,  be  the  dictate  of  be- 
nevolence, not  only  to  refrain  from  sending  out  mis- 
sionaries, but  to  recall  those  already  in  the  field,  and 
to  suffer  Christendom  itself  to  relapse  into  barbarism. 

But  what  can  be  more  contrary  to  common  sense 
and  to  Scripture  than  the  supposition  that  a  state  of 
depravity,  even  of  the  most  appalling  wickedness,  ex- 
ists in  the  world,  for  which  men  are  not  accountable  ; 
to  which  they  sustain  the  relation,  not  of  responsible 
agents,  but  of  passive  instruments  and  sufferers  ? 

The  heathen  are  capable  of  discovering  the  being 
and  the  essential  attributes  of  God ;  for  these  must  be 
learned  from  the  light  of  nature — from  the  works  of 
God — if  they  are  known  at  all.  Though  a  professed 
revelation  may  first  call  our  attention  to  the  fact,  and 
may  present  it  in  a  more  clear  and  impressive  view,  we 
must,  in  the  order  of  thought,  derive  our  first  knowl- 
edge of  God  from  the  visible  creation.  This  the  hea- 
then are  capable  of  doing,  and  for  not  doing  this  the 
Scriptures  themselves  declare  them  to  be  guilty  and 


20  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

condemned.  "  That  which  may  be  known  of  God  is 
manifest  in  (or  among)  them ;  for  God  hath  showed  it 
to  them  ;  for  the  invisible  things  of  Him  from  the  cre- 
ation of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  understood 
by  the  things  that  are  made,  even  His  eternal  power 
and  Godhead,  so  that  they  are  witliout  excuse." 
(Romans  i.  19,  20.)  Still  further,  it  is  alleged, 
that  they  were  not  only  capable  of  knowing  God,  but 
that  they  actually  did  know  Him,  and  suppressed  the 
truth  willfully  for  imrighteous  ends.  And  it  is  a  re- 
markable fact,  that  almost  every  system  of  religion  in 
the  world  had,  in  its  origin,  and  exhibits  in  its  sacred 
books  and  in  the  writings  of  its  expounders,  ideas  of 
the  unity  and  the  perfections  of  the  Deity  mainly  co- 
incident with  those  of  Revelation. 

Zoroaster  says  of  God,  that  "  He  is  the  first  of  all 
incorruptible  beings,  eternal  and  unbegotten  :  He  is 
not  compounded  of  parts.  There  is  none  like  nor 
equal  to  Him.  He  is  the  Author  of  all  good,  and  en- 
th-ely  disinterested ;  the  most  excellent  of  all  excellent 
beings,  and  the  wisest  of  all  mtelligent  natures ;  the 
Father  of  equity,  the  Parent  of  good  laws,  self -instruct- 
ed, self-sufficient,  and  the  first  fonner  of  nature." 

The  foUowmg  is  what  is  termed  the  holiest  verse  of 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  21 

the  Yedas,  or  sacred  books  of  the  Hindoos.  "  Let  us 
adore  the  supremacy  of  that  divme  Sun,  the  Godhead, 
who  ilkiminates  all,  who  recreates  all,  from  whom  all 
proceed,  to  whom  all  must  return,  whom  we  mvoke 
to  direct  our  understandings  aright,  in  our  progress  to 
His  holy  seat.  What  the  sun  and  light  are  to  this 
visible  world,  that  are  the  supreme  good  and  truth  to 
the  intellectual  and  invisible  universe  ;  and  as  our 
corporeal  eyes  have  a  distinct  perception  of  objects 
enlightened  by  the  sun,  thus  our  souls  acquire  certain 
knowledge  by  meditating  on  the  hght  of  truth  which 
emanates  from  the  Being  of  beings ;  that  is  the  light 
by  which  alone  our  minds  can  be  directed  in  the  path 
of  beatitude.  Without  hand  or  foot.  He  runs  rapidly 
and  grasps  firmly  ;  without  eyes,  He  sees  ;  without 
ears,  He  hears  all ;  He  knows  whatever  can  be  known, 
but  there  is  none  who  knows  Him :  Him  the  wise  call 
the  great,  supreme,  pervading  spirit:  without  cause, 
the  first  of  all  causes  ;  all-ruling ;  all-powerful ;  the 
creator,  preserver,  transformer  of  all  things."* 

In  like  manner,  in  almost  every  system  of  heathen- 
ism, even  among  our  own  aborigines,  we  find  some 
traces  of  the  knowledge  of  the  true  God,  mixed  up, 
*  Sir  William  Jones's  Works. 


22  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

indeed,  with  much  that  is  ridiculous  arid  false,  yet  dis- 
tinct enough  to  show  the  universal  capacity  of  man  for 
knowing  God,  and  to  justify  the  condemnation  of  idola- 
ters. Wherefore  the  heathen  are  inexcusable  and  are 
under  condemnation,  "  because,  that  when  they  knew 
God,  they  glorified  Him  not  as  God,  neither  Avere  thank- 
ful." Idolatry  is  always  condemned  in  Scriptui'e  as  a 
crime ;  it  is  never  extenuated.  No  intelligent  convert 
from  heathenism  to  Christianity,  ever  thought  of  excul- 
pating himself  from  the  guilt  of  his  previous  life  on  the 
plea  of  ignorance,  or  of  a  want  of  capacity  for  knowing 
and  obeying  the  true  God  and  the  great  law  of  his 
moral  being.  On  the  contrary,  many  among  the  hea- 
then, even  prior  to  conversion,  have  admitted  the 
truthfulness  of  Paul's  delineation  of  their  character, 
in  the  first  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans ;  and 
that,  too,  without  the  least  attempt  at  self -justification. 
Moreover,  the  prevalence  of  sacrifices  for  sin  and  offer- 
ings to  appease  the  gods,  the  forms  of  justice  which  they 
obsei*ve  among  themselves,  the  instinctive  promptness 
with  which  they  resent  and  avenge  personal  wrongs, 
the  horror  which  they  manifest  at  crime  as.  committed 
against  themselves,  and  the  almost  universal  doctrine 
of  a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punishments,  all  show 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  23 

tliat  tliey  have  a  moral  sense ;  that  they  can  distin- 
guish between  right  and  wrong  moral  action;  that 
they  know  or  could  know  enough  of  the  true  God  and 
of  His  moral  government  to  render  them  accountable, 
amenable  to  law.  This  is  alleged  over  and  over 
again  in  the  Scriptures.  "They  changed  the  truth 
of  God — the  true  and  li^dng  God — into  a  lie,  and 
worshiped  and  served  the  creature  more  than  the 
Creator  ;  for  this  cause  God  gave  them  up  to  vile  af- 
fections. Because  they  did  not  like  to  retain  God 
in  their  knowledge,  God  gave  them  over  to  a  repro- 
bate mind." 

Those  who  have  a  revelation,  can  not  easily  de- 
termine how  much  truth  the  human  mind  might 
discover  without  it.  Undoubtedly  the  works  of  God 
are  illuminated  by  His  Word.  We  see  a  brighter 
glory  in  the  creation  because  we  have  from  infancy 
received  it  as  an  historic  fact,  that  "  in  the  beorinninfr 
God  made  the  heavens  and  the  eartli."  Still,  in  the 
order  of  nature,  we  must  and  do  derive  our  knowledge 
of  the  existence  and  the  attributes  of  God  from  His 
works  and  not  from  His  Word.  We  must  know  that 
there  is  a  God  before  we  can  know  that  we  have  a 
revelation  from  God. 


24  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

That  which  claims  to  be  a  revelation  may  possess 
a  character  so  remarkable  as  to  furnish  evidence  within 
itself  of  its  di^dne  origin.  But  in  estimating  that  evi- 
dence, we  either  compare  these  internal  marks  with 
our  previous  knowledge  of  God,  derived  from  His 
works,  or  we  reason  from  the  supernatural  character 
of  the  production  in  question,  to  the  existence  and  tlie 
attributes  of  God  ;  thus  inferring  the  existence  of  such 
a  Being  from  a  work,  a  production,  which  must  have 
had  a  divine  author.  In  neither  case  would  we  take 
the  mere  testimony  of  a  professed  revelation  as  the 
ground  of  our  belief  in  the  existence  of  God.  Either 
we  do  already  believe  in  God  from  His  works,  and 
receive  a  revelation  as  from  Him  because  it  comports 
with  what  we  already  know  of  Him,  or  we  make  the 
character  of  that  professed  revelation  itself,  as  some- 
thing plainly  supernatural,  a  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God. 

A  revelation  fi'om  God  may  throw  a  clearer  light 
VLfon  His  nature  and  character  as  previously  seen  in 
His  works ;  but  it  is  from  His  works,  in  the  order  of 
thought,  that  our  knowledge  of  His  existence  and 
attributes  must  first  come.  We  enter  a  cavern  huno: 
wkh  stalactites  and  paved  with  marble  and  precious 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  25 

stones,  bearing  with  us  a  dark  lantern,  whose  stragghng 
rays  serve  only  to  disclose  to  us  massive  and  shape- 
less piles,  whose  dim  outlines  add  terror  to  the  gloom  ; 
and  after  groping  our  way  through  one  or  two  cham- 
bers we  grope  back  again  without  having  seen  any  of 
the  beauties  and  wonders  of  the  cave :  whereupon  a 
guide  offers  to  attend  us,  and,  with  blazing  torch  in  hand, 
lights  up  that  vast  cavern  with  an  unearthly  radiance  ; 
that  single  torch  being  multiplied  in  rainbow  colors 
from  mirrored  walls  and  jeweled  pavements,  while 
pillars  and  pendants  of  translucent  marble,  now 
sheathed  in  lis^ht,  are  seen  sustainino;  and  adorninof  the 
spangled  arch  of  this  magic  temple,  whose  thousand 
echoes  wake  to  the  music  of  distant  water-falls  and 
the  detonations  of  subterranean  cataracts.  Now  what 
has  wi'ought  this  change  ?  The  guide  has  produced 
none  of  these  marvels.  The  pillars  were  there,  the 
polished  walls,  the  jeweled  arch  and  tesselated  pave- 
ment, all  were  there  when  first  we  entered ;  but 
we  had  no  torch.  Not  venturing  to  expose  our  feeble 
rush-light,  we  had  placed  it  in  a  dark  lantern,  and  had 
therefore  groped  in  solitude  and  gloom.  Had  we 
opened  the  lantern    the  discovery  would  have  been 

GUI'S. 

2 


26  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

Now  here  we  are  in  tlie  vast  temple  of  God's  crea- 
tion— the  pillared  firmament  above  our  heads,  the 
jeweled  earth  beneath  our  feet,  and  forms  of  beauty 
and  grandeur  everywhere  around  us.  But  we  want 
light.  Did  we  but  take  the  light  of  reason,  of  our 
(Tiscerning  faculty,  and  pour  it  forth  over  these  works 
of  God,  God  would  Himself  be  visible.  His  power, 
His  wisdom,  His  love,  His  divine  supremacy,  would 
be  clearly  seen ;  all  things  would  become  radiant  with 
a  celestial  glory,  while  reflecting  in  endless  repetition 
and  countless  diversities,  the  first  few  rays  of  light 
from  that  thoughtful,  inquiring,  self-enlightening  mind. 

But  if  that  mind  be  wrapped  up  within  itself,  if  rea- 
son be  vailed  by  sense,  shut  up  as  it  were  in  a  dark 
lantern,  glimmering  only  through  its  crevices,  there 
will  be  no  God  in  creation,  no  temple  of  the  Infinite 
One  ;  nothing  but  the  grotesque,  distorted  and  gloomy- 
images  of  a  bewildered  fancy.  Even  if  the  heaven- 
kindled  torch  of  revelation  illumines  the  world,  that 
mind  will  see  nothing  of  God  till  its  sensual  vail  is 
removed.  But  is  God,  therefore,  not  to  be  seen  in 
nature  ?  Is  He  not  there  ?  May  He  not,  though  per- 
sonally invisible,  yet  be  understood,  from  the  things 
that  are  made,  in  His  eternal  power  and  Godhead  ? 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 


2T 


If  man  is  too  depraved  to  judge  of  the  evidence  of 
the  being  of  a  God,  or  to  form  any  just  decisions  upon 
moral  truth,  without  a  revelation,  then,  surely,  he  is 
disqualified,  from  the  same  cause,  for  judging  of  the 
evidences  of  a  revelation.  But  human  reason,  with 
all  its  weakness  and  imperfection,  in  one  way  or 
another,  must  judge  of  the  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  God,  or  the  fact  of  His  existence  can  never  be 
established  in  a  single  human  mind.  And  we  go  even 
farther,  and  claim,  that  not  only  the  existence,  but 
also  the  benevolence  of  God,  is  discoverable  from  the 
light  of  nature,  and  must  be  proved  from  that  source, 
or  it  can  never  be  proved  at  all.  Could  we  believe 
that  God  is  good  upon  His  own  declaration,  if  in  six 
thousand  years  He  had  given  no  evidence  of  goodness 
to  His  creatures  ;  if  He  had  not  given  them  a  constant 
witness  to  that  fact,  in  that  "He  did  good,  and  gave 
them  rain  from  heaven,  and  fruitful  seasons,  filling 
their  hearts  with  food  and  gladness?"  Besides,  m 
order  to  receive  the  testimony  of  the  Word  of  God  to 
His  benevolence,  we  must  assume  the  very  fact  to  be 
proved,  namely,  that  God  is  too  good  to  deceive  His 
creatures,  and  is  therefore  to  be  believed  when  He 
^ieclares  that  He  is  good !     Revelation  may  throw  a 


28 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 


luster  upon  the  divine  benevolence  which  we 
would  not  otherwise  discover,  or  it  may  bring  that 
benevolence  into  view  under  new  and  interestingr 
aspects  ;  but  the  heathen  are  condemned  in  Scripture, 
"  because  when  they  knew  God  they  glorified  Him 
not  as  God,  neither  ivere  thankful."  But  how  could 
they  be  condemned  for  being  unthankful,  declared  to 
be  "without  excuse"  for  their  ingratitude,  if  they 
were  incapable  of  discovering,  without  a  revelation, 
that  God  is  good  ?  The  fact  is  settled  by  Scripture 
itself,  that  the  heathen  are  under  condemnation  for 
known  and  willful  sin. 

The  state  of  the  heathen  world,  then,  is  not  merely 
a  state  of  degradation,  but  of  (/uilt ;  a  state  of  volun- 
tary apostasy  from  God.  The  sad  record  of  their 
deeds  is  not  the  story  of  the  misfortunes  of  the  race, 
but  the  story  of  its  depravity,  a  depravity  whose  dark 
and  slimy  flood  grows  deeper  and  more  turbulent  as 
it  rolls  on  from  generation  to  generation.  The  dark- 
est shade  of  the  picture  drawn  by  Paul  is  that  of 
guilt.  To  doubt  this,  to  question  whether  the  heathen 
are  in  a  state  of  guilt  and  condemnation,  morally  im- 
potent because  morally  perverse,  is  to  question  the 
first  truths  in  moral  science,  and  to  dispute  the  plair^ 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  29 

declarations  of  the  Bible.  Such  is  the  evidence  of 
their  responsibility  and  guilt  in  the  Scriptures  them- 
selves, that  a  doubt  on  that  point  is  culpable  skepti- 
cism. But  there  is  abundance  of  such  skepticism  in 
the  Church,  sometimes  avowed,  more  frequently  in- 
dulged in  secret,  and  exhibited  only  in  a  want  of  zeal 
to  save  the  milhons  that  are  perishing. 

This  skepticism  is  attributable  in  part,  also,  to  a 
morbid  state  of  the  sensibilities  which  inchnes  the 
mind  to  a  distorted  view  of  the  benevolence  of  God. 
There  is  something  so  horrible  in  the  thought  that 
millions  of  our  fellow-men  are  exposed  to  eternal  mis- 
ery, that  we  are  glad  to  find  relief  from  it  anywhere ; 
to  imao^ine  that  the  case  of  the  heathen  is  not  so  de- 
plorable  as  it  seems  to  be,  and  that  even  if  they  are 
guilty  as  well  as  degraded,  a  benevolent  God  will  not 
suffer  them  to  perish  eternally.  This  state  of  feeling 
was  strongly  developed  in  Mr.  Foster  toward  the 
close  of  his  life.  He  speaks  of  the  condition  of  the 
world  as  "  transcendently  direful,  when  \iewed  in  con- 
nection with  the  doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  future  mis- 
ery." And  its  very  direfulness  led  him  to  reject  that 
doctrine.  ''  It  amazes  me,"  he  says,  "  to  imagine  how 
thoughtful  and  benevolent  men,  believing  that  doc- 


30  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

trine,  can  endure  the  sight  of  the  present  world  and 
the  history  of  the  past.     To  behold  successive,  innu- 
merable crowds  carried  on  in  the  mighty  impulse  of 
a  depraved  nature,  which  they  are  impotent  to  reverse, 
and  to  which  it  is  not  the  will  of  God,  in  His  sover- 
eignty, to  apply  the  only  adequate  power,  the  with- 
holding of  which  consigns  them  inevitably  to  their 
doom — to  see  them  passing  through  a  short  term  of 
mortal  existence,  under  all  the  world's  pernicious  in- 
fluences, Anth  the  addition  of  the  mahgn  and  deadly 
one  of  the  great  tempter  and  destroyer,  to  confirm  and 
augment  the  inherent  depra^^ty,  on  their  speedy  pas- 
sage to  everlasting  wo — I  repeat,  I  am,  without  pre- 
tending to  any  extraordinaiy  depth  of  feeling,  amazed 
to  conceive  what  they  contrive  to  do  with  their  sensi- 
bility, and  in  what  manner  they  maintain  a  firm  assur- 
ance  of  the  divine   goodness   and  justice."*      Tlie 
amount  of  all  wliich  is  :  It  is  too  horrible  to  conceive 
of  the  heathen  as  being  in  a  damnable  state ;  there- 
fore they  can  not  be  in  such  a  state.     If  the  idea  of 
their  future  misery  is  so  repugnant  to  our  sensibilities; 
it  is  much  more  so  to  a  being  of  infinite  benevolence  ; 
therefore  God  will  surely  save  tliem,  imd  therefore 
*  Letter  to  Dr.  Harris. 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  31 

we  need  not  be  greatly  concerned  for  them.  But 
what,  we  ask,  do  good  men,  beheving  in  the  necessity 
of  penalties  to  support  law,  "  contrive  to  do  with  their 
sensibility"  when  a  criminal  is  executed,  or  is  sen- 
tenced to  imprisonment  for  life?  "  and  in  what  man- 
ner do  they  maintain  a  firm  assurance  of  the  goodness 
and  justice"  of  the  judge  who  pronounces  such  a  sen- 
tence ?  Why  this  is  the  very  thing  that  gives  them 
that  assm-ance.  The  contrary  course  would  make 
them  tremble  for  the  welfare  of  the  state.  Mere  sen- 
sibility, mere  sympathy  for  suffering  as  such,  must 
give  place  to  an  enlightened  and  comprehensive  be- 
nevolence. Just  so  do  good  men,  "  belie\'ing  the  doc- 
trine of  the  eternity  of  future  misery,"  men  of  keen 
sensibility  but  of  enlightened  understandings,  look 
upon  the  heathen  as  in  a  lost  condition,  without  im- 
pugning either  the  goodness  or  the  justice  of  God,  and 
look  upon  them  with  the  more  tender  and  available 
compassion  on  that  very  account.  It  was  Mr.  Fos- 
ter's philosophy  of  human  depravity,  as  a  state  ap- 
pointed by  God  for  sovereign  reasons,  and  which  men 
are  "impotent  to  reverse,"  which  led  him  to  question 
whether  the  heathen  or  the  race  at  large  would  ever 
be  punished  by  a  just  and  good  God.     The  view  of 


32  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

tlie  state  of  the  heathen  world  wliich  is  given  by 
Paul,  the  common-sense,  matter-of-fact  idea  of  volun- 
tariness and  consequent  responsibility,  vs^herever  moral 
depravity  exists,  scatters  all  such  sentimentalism  and 
skepticism  like  vapor.  But  defective  views  of  the  na- 
ture and  extent  of  human  depravity,  together  with 
that  distorted  view  of  the  benevolence  of  God  which 
arises  from  a  morbid  sensibility,  do  in  fact  produce 
skepticism  as  to  the  actual  condition  of  mankind  at 
large — their  guilt  and  danger — in  minds  less  profound 
than  Foster's,  and  less  interested  than  his  was  at  one 
period  in  missionary  labors.  Such  skepticism  is  one 
of  the  most  serious  restraints  upon*  the  missionary  en- 
terprise  of  the  present  age. 

This  topic,  although  of  painful  interest,  must  here 
be  dismissed,  to  take  up  a  second  form  in  which 
skepticism  exhibits  itself  in  relation  to  the  missionary 
work. 

2.  There  is  much  slce2)ticism  in  the  Church,  as  to 
the  purpose  of  God  that  the  world  shall  be  evangelized 
and  converted  to  Himself.  Admitting  that  the  heathen 
are  in  a  state  of  guilt  and  condemnation,  and  on  that 
account  are  proper  objects  of  Christian  sympathy  and 
effort,  it  is  still  questioned  by  some,  whether  the  plan 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  33 

of  redemption  in  its  final  results  comprehends  the 
conversion  of  the  world  at  large;  whether  God  does 
not,  for  wise  reasons,  intend  to  destroy  the  heathen, 
instead  of  gathering  them  into  the  kingdom  of  His 
Son.  This  view  arises  from  a  misunderstanding  of 
prophecy,  and  from  a  disregard  of  the  connection  be- 
tween the  divine  vohtion  and  human  agency  with 
respect  to  such  a  work. 

There  are  many  who  take  the  ground  that  the 
thorough  evangehzation  of  the  world  is  not  contem- 
plated in  prophecy ;  that  all  which  was  ever  intended 
to  be  accomplished  in  this  way,  was  done  in  the  first 
two  or  three  centuries  of  the  Christian  era ;  that 
Christ  will  set  up  His  kingdom  on  earth  by  a  series 
of  judgments,  destroying'  the  wicked,  and  giving  un- 
disputed possession  to  His  saints.  Now,  that  great 
political  and  social  changes  are  foretold  in  the  Scrip- 
tiu-es,  and  that  appalling  judgments  are  to  be  visited 
upon  the  nations,  is  plain  to  every  reader  of  prophecy. 
These  judgments  are  likened  to  the  most  terrible  catas- 
trophes in  the  material  universe.  The  sun  is  turned 
into  darkness,  the  moon  into  blood,  the  stars  fall  from 
heaven,  the  mountains  and  the  islands  are  moved  from 
their  places.  These  strong  figurative  expressions  in- 
2* 


34  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

dicate  great  and  it  may  be  sudden  and  violent  changes. 
But  these  changes  are  to  be  connected  -with  the 
progress  of  rehgion ;  they  are  to  result  from,  or  will 
contribute  to,  the  spread  of  the  gospel.  They  are 
not  to  be  independent  movements  of  Providence,  much 
less  are  they  to  supersede  the  appointed  means  of 
grace :  but  tliey  form  a  part  of  the  great  system  of 
means  for  the  salvation  of  mankind.  In  this  view, 
whether  still  in  the  vista  of  the  future,  or  already 
transpiring  before  our  eyes,  they  become  incentives  to 
effort  rather  than  a  restraint  upon  effort.  Such 
changes  have  always  attended  the  progress  of  true 
religion  in  the  world ;  they  belong  to  a  great  series 
of  events  in  the  providence  of  God,  all  linked  together 
by  His  purpose  to  recover  this  lost  race  to  Himself. 
The  civihzed  world  was  prepared  for  the  easy  diff'u- 
sion  of  Christianity  in  the  beginning,  by  the  conquests 
and  the  political  unity  of  the  Roman  Empire.  And 
when  Christianity  as  a  system  had  become  strong 
enough  to  endure  the  shock,  the  way  was  opened  for 
intioducino;  it  amonc^  the  uncivilized  nations  of  the 
Nortli,  by  the  forcible  dissolution  of  that  same  empire, 
"  And  be  it  remembered,"  says  a  late  writer,  in  refer- 
ence to  these  changes,  "  be  it  remembered,  that  these 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  35 

are  events,  which,  though  described  by  us  with  a 
stroke  of  the  pen,  filled  the  eye  of  the  prophet  with 
a  vision  of  broken  thrones,  and  his  ear  with  the  shriek 
of  expiring  nations,  events  which,  when  they  occurred, 
threw  the  earth  into  political  convulsions,  and  the  his- 
tory of  which  might  be  easily  expanded  into  blood- 
stained volumes."*  They  were  in  fact  changes  so  por- 
tentous as  to  be  well  represented  by  the  convulsions 
of  nature.  Just  such  changes  will  God  bring  about 
in  the  fulfillment  of  His  promise  to  His  Son,  that  He 
shall  possess  the  earth.  And  yet  these  predicted 
changes  make  man}^  skeptical  respecting  the  import,  if 
not  the  reality,  of  such  a  promise. 

A  favorite  proof-text  with  those  interpreters  of 
prophecy  who  suppose  that  there  is  nothing  but  judg- 
ment reserved  for  the  mass  of  mankind,  is  the  declara- 
tion of  the  second  Psalm  :  "  Thou  shalt  break  them 
with  a  rod  of  iron ;  thou  shalt  dash  them  in  pieces 
like  a  potter's  vessel."  From  this  it  is  argued,  that 
the  heathen  are  given  to  Christ  only  to  be  extirpated 
or  destroyed,  so  that  He  may  reign  without  an  enemy 
on  earth  ;  and,  therefore,  that  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to 
convert  them.  But  is  that  the  scope  of  this  prophecy  ? 
*  Harris. 


36  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

Whom  is  Immaiiuel  to  break  with  a  rod  of  iron  ? 
What  is  He  to  dash  in  pieces  hke  a  potter's  vessel  ? 
Mere  masses  of  men,  or  nations  in  their  corporate  capa- 
city, whose  social,  religious,  and  political  institutions 
obstruct  the  progress  of  His  kingdom  ?  For  what 
purpose  is  the  power  of  the  sword  given  to  the  ^les- 
siah,  but  that  He  may  secure  His  promised  inher- 
itance— an  inheritance  not  of  mere  territory,  but  of 
willing  subjects,  brought  into  obedience  by  moral  in- 
iluences,  when  political  obstructions  shall  have 
been  removed  by  His  wonder-working  providence  ? 
Jehovah,  amid  the  solemn  pomp  of  the  Messiah's  in- 
auguration on  the  holy  hill  of  Zion,  forewarns  the 
kings  and  rulers  of  the  earth  of  the  destined  triumph 
of  His  kingdom.  He  bids  them  cheerfully  submit  to 
it,  lest  it  should  bear  them  down.  **  The  world  I 
have  given  to  my  Son ;  the  people  whom  you  rule  are 
His  inheritance ;  in  vain  will  you  oppose  the  progress 
of  His  kingdom  ;  enter  your  territories  it  must ;  peace- 
ably if  it  can,  forcibly  if  resisted  ;  under  your  thrones 
or  over  them,  onward  it  must  move,  thousrh  its  tread 
be  the  convulsion  of  empires,  the  shaking  of  the  earth. 
Be  wise  now,  therefore,  0  ye  kings ;  be  instructed, 
ye  judges  of  the  earth.    Serve  the  Lord  with  fear,  and 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  37 

rejoice  -with  trembling.  Kiss  the  Son  lest  he  be 
angry,  and  ye  perish  from  the  way,  when  His  wrath 
is  kindled  but  a  httle." 

It  had  been  well  for  Jerusalem  and  for  ancient 
Rome  if  they  had  heeded  this  warning.  The  speedy 
doAvnfall  of  the  Jewish  and  Pagan  persecuting 
powers,  shows  how  vain  is  the  rage  of  earthly 
monarchs  against  Him  who  wields  a  rod  of  iron  as 
well  as  a  scepter  of  grace.  It  had  been  well  for  Chi- 
na, for  India,  for  Madagascar,  if  they  had  welcomed 
Christianity  and  had  thus  conciliated  the  King  in  Zion, 
instead  of  proA^oking  the  rod  of  His  strength.  Again 
and  again  had  the  gospel  knocked  at  the  door  of 
China;  again  and  again  had  the  ambassadors  of  Chris- 
tian nations  sued  for  admittance  there.  That  haughty 
people,  regarding  themselves  as  of  celestial  origin,  and 
worshiping  their  emperor  as  the  son  of  heaven,  de- 
spised the  light  and  tiiith  Avhich  God  has  sent  into  the 
world.  But  China  belongs  to  Christ ;  He  must  not 
be  deprived  of  it ;  and  as  milder  agencies  will  not  suf- 
fice, the  rod  of  iron  must  humble  her  pride  and  break 
down  her  massive  wall.  China,  as  a  political  power, 
has  been  dashed  in  pieces,  that  Christ  may  have  the 
ends  of  the  earth  for  His  inheritance. 


38 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY, 


So  now,  m  all  Europe,  thrones  are  shaking,  despot- 
ism is  vanishing  away;  and  those  great  thoughts  and 
principles  which  have  so  long  lain  imbedded  in  the 
New  Testament  are  starting  up  to  the  admiration  of 
the  nations,  and  clothing  themselves  with  a  power 
greater  than  that  of  kings  and  of  armies. 

How  then  can  Christians  with  such  illustrations 
of  this  prophecy  before  their  eyes,  seeing  that  wars 
and  commotions  among  the  nations  do  but  break  down 
the  barriers  that  encompass  the  inheritance  of  Christ, 
and  open  the  way  for  His  triumph,  how  can  they,  see- 
ing this,  make  this  very  prophecy  the  ground  of  doubt 
as  to  the  intended  subjugation  of  the  world  to  Christ, 
and  a  plea  for  the  relinquishment  of  missionary  effort  ? 
Yet  so  it  is.  Such  skepticism  meets  us  at  every  turn, 
and  clogs  the  wheels  of  missionary  enterprise. 

Skepticism  upon  this  point  is  engendered,  also,  by  a 
false  philosophy  respecting  the  decrees  of  God — a 
philosophy  which  overlooks  the  connection  between 
the  divine  volition  and  human  agency  in  such  a  work, 
and  sinks  into  a  stolid  fatalism.  Here,  asfain,  Mr. 
Foster  furnishes  us  with  the  most  recent,  striking,  and 
painful  illustration  of  our  meaning.  In  his  letter  to 
Dr.  Hanis,  he  speaks  contemptuously  of  "  the  light 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  3^ 

in  which  the  Almighty  is  presented"  in  much  of  what 
is  spoken  and  written  in  the  missionary  service."  He 
here  alludes  to  the  prevailing  idea,  that  Christians  must 
co-operate  with  God  in  the  evangelization  of  the 
world,  and  that  while  God  Himself  is  "  earnestly  intent 
on  human  salvation,"  the  work  may  be  delayed  by 
then'  inaction :  the  very  doctrine  which  we  are  aiming 
to  estabhsh.  This  view  Mr.  Foster  denounces  as  bor- 
dering on  impiety ;  for,  says  he,  "  a  single  volition  of 
the  Almighty  could  transform  the  whole  race  in  a  mo- 
ment ;"  and  again,  he  adds,  "■  how  self-evident  the 
proposition,  that  if  the  Sovereign  Arbiter  had  intended 
the  salvation  of  the  race,  it  must  have  been  accom- 
plished." This  argument  is  briefly  as  follows.  God 
is  an  absolute  sovereign.  He  can  accomplish  there- 
fore Avhatever  He  wills  to  do.  Accordingly,  He 
could  transform  the  race  by  His  almighty  power,  if 
He  should  will  so  to  do.  But  the  race  has  not  been 
transformed,  the  Avorld  has  not  been  converted ;  there- 
fore God  has  not  willed  that  it  should  be.  In  fact, 
for  some  wise  though  hidden  reason.  He  has  willed 
exactly  the  reverse ;  therefore  it  is  idle,  presumptuous, 
and  even  impious,  for  us  to  attempt  to  convert  the 
Avorld.     It  is  a  pity  that  the  sanction  of  so  great  a 


40  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

name  should  have  been  given  to  such  pious  fatalism. 
Happily  Mr.  Foster  himself,  in  the  discourse  which 
follows,  refutes  this  very  fatalism  in  a  manner  which 
completely  neutralizes  his  own  subsequent  authority, 
and  annihilates  his  sophistical  philosophy.  He  there 
gives  it  as  his  opinion,  that  the  chief  hindrance  to  a 
more  vigorous  system  of  missionary  effort  on  the  part 
of  Christians,  "  consists  in  a  kind  of  religious  fatalism, 
which  would  make  the  objection  in  some  such  terms 
as  these :  if  that  Being  whose  power  is  almighty,  has 
willed  to  permit  on  earth  the  protracted  existence,  in 
opposition  to  Him,  of  this  enormous  evil,  why  are  tve 
called  upon  to  vex  and  exhaust  ourselves  in  a  petty 
warfare  against  it  ?  Why  any  more  than  to  attempt 
the  extinction  of  a  volcano  ?  If  it  were  His  will  that 
it  should  be  overthrown,  we  should  soon,  without 
having  quitted  our  places  and  our  quiet  in  any  offens- 
ivQ  movement  toward  it,  feel  the  earthquake  of  its 
mighty  catastrophe  ;  and  if  such  is  not  His  will,  then 
we  should  "be  plainly  putting  ourselves  in  the  predic- 
ament of  willini^  somethino;  which  He  does  not  will, 
and  making  exertions  which  must  infallibly  prove 
abortive."  This,  it  will  be  observed,  was  Mr.  Foster's 
own  reasonini:^  later  in  life,  and  it  is  the  common  rea- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  41 

soning  of  fatalists  upon  the  subject.  But  mark  how 
thoroughly  he  meets  it.  He  inquires  whether  the  rea- 
soner  supposes  that  this  permitted  evil  is  not  in  its 
nature  hostile  and  oflfensive  to  God,  or  that  God  is  at 
peace  with  it  ?  If  it  is  hostile  to  Him,  how  can  you 
be  at  peace  with  it  without  forming  an  alliance  with 
His  enemy?  Are  ijou  authorized  to  permit  a  great 
moral  evil  because  God  does  so  ?  "  For  you  to  main- 
tain a  calm  tolerance  toward  it  because  He  does  not 
destroy  it,  is  no  less  than  to  yield  it  an  amicable  acqui- 
escence, no  less  therefore  than  an  alliance  with  His 
enemy,  unless  this  tolerance  is  maintained  for  precisely 
those  reasons,  clearly  understood,  which  are  His  rea- 
sons, for  permitting  it."  Besides,  what  right  have 
you  to  assume  ''the  continuance  .oi  this  permission 
indefinitely  into  futurity  ?  When,  for  any  thing  that 
can  be  known  to  you,  hostile  means  put  in  action  at 
this  period  may  coincide  with  a  divine  decree  to  ter- 
minate that  mysterious  sufferance  ;  and  then,  what- 
ever were  the  natural  inadequacy  of  those  means,  they 
would  seem  to  have  caught  the  fire  of  Gideon's  lamps, 
and  be  made  to  flame  out  with  supernatural  power 
of  rout  and  confusion  to  the  host  of  pagan  gods.  *  * 
Though  it  has  been  the  mysterious  will  of  the  Supreme 


4i2  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

Governor  to  permit  great  systems  of  wickedness  in  the 
earth,  it  has  as  evidently  been  His  will  to  maintain  a 
continual  war  against  them,"  This  His  subjects  are 
required  to  do — to  war  against  sin  in  their  own  souls, 
and  in  the  world,  wherever  it  exists. 

The  conquest  of  e"vil  forms  a  part  of  our  moral  dis- 
cipline in  this  world.  It  serves  as  a  test  of  character. 
And  where  that  evil  is  concentrated  in  systems  and 
institutions,  venerable  with  acje  and  clothed  with, 
power,  the  contest  with  it  demands  much  patience, 
courage,  faith,  and  zeal,  and  serves  to  develop  the 
higher  virtues  of  the  Christian  character. 

Since  accountableness  for  the  limited  spread  of 
Christianity  must  rest  somewhere,  it  were  well  to  in- 
quire what  proportion  of  it  may  belong  to  those  whose 
doubts,  whether  derived  from  philosophy  or  from 
prophecy,  respecting  the  intention  of  God  that  the 
world  shall  be  Christianized,  have  restrained  them  from 
the  use  of  means  and  influence  given  them  for — they 
know  not  what. 

3.  Skepticism,  in  respect  to  the  missionary  tuork, 
is  further  deveJop)ed  in  doubts  and  queries  as  to  the 
proper  time  for  att emitting  to  evangelize  the  U'orld. 
Admitting  that  the  spread  of  Christianity  is  to  be 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  43 

universal,  there  are  those  who  question  the  expedi- 
ency of  present  missionary  operations.  They  regard 
them  as  premature  and  wasteful.  Some  maintain  that 
the  world  must  be  civilized  before  we  attempt 
to  spread  the  gospel ;  others,  that  Christ's  second 
advent  must  precede  such  an  attempt ;  and  otliers 
still,  that,  every  such  attempt  must  prove  abortive 
imtil  God's  appointed  time  arrives.  The  first  view 
has  been  set  forth  in  these  words :  "  We  know  the 
showiness  of  heathen  missions  ;  nay,  Ave  appreciate 
the  zeal  and  disinterestedness  of  those  who  go  forth 
upon  this  forlorn  hope ;  but  we  must  have  leave  to 
doubt  whether  the  results  are  so  proportioned  to  the 
means  as  to  make  those  accountable  for  their  steward- 
ship able  to  reckon  with  then*  Lord  for  the  moral  cap- 
ital invested  in  this  enterprise.  The  rescue  of  Jerusa- 
lem from  the  infidel  is  a  parallel  case  of  Christian  activ- 
ity. If  the  Christian  world  would  unite  in  some  sensible 
efforts  to  civilize  the  heathen,  we  should  think  them 
in  the  line  of  their  Christian  duty.  We  have  very 
httle  faith  in  the  success  of  any  endeavors  to  Chris- 
tianize in  advance  of  civihzation."*  Would  that  this 
caviling  skepticism  were  confined  to  those  who  have 
*  Christian  Inquirer,  1848. 


44  PRELIMINARY-   ESSAY. 

110  sympathy  with  the  evangehcal  system  which  we 
are  seeking  to  extend.  But  this  notion  that  civihza- 
tion  must  precede  all  efforts  for  the  conversion  of  the 
heathen,  possesses  the  minds  of  many  in  the  Church, 
who  have  most  conscientious  scruples  about  throwing 
away  money — upon  an  experiment  to  do  good. 

Those  who  entertain  this  opinion  must  be  exceed- 
ingly blind  to  history  and  to  facts  occurring  before 
their  eyes.  How  much  of  the  civilization  of  modem 
Europe  is  to  be  traced  to  the  influence  of  Christianity, 
which,  notAvithstanding  its  own  degeneracy,  survived 
the  decay  of  the  ancient  civilization,  and  was  the  vital 
element  of  the  new.  Civilization,  without  this  reh- 
gious  element,  has  commonly  been  extended,  not  by 
reclaiming  barbarous  nations  but  by  exterminating 
them.  It  is  the  testimony  of  Niebuhr,  that  "  an  un- 
civilized people  has  never  derived  benefit  from  contact 
with  a  civilized  race."  The  assertion  may  be  too  un- 
qualified, but  it  is  so  far  true  that  many  students  of 
history  and  ethnography  have  formed  the  conclusion 
that  the  uncivilized  world  is  irreclaimable  and  must 
be  blotted  out.  But  when  has  civilization  prepared 
the  way  for  the  introduction  of  Christianity  among  a 
barbarous  people  whom  it  has  even  partially  reclaim- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  45 

ed  ?  Has  is  not  left  their  religious  and  social  institu- 
tions in  the  main  unchanged,  while  it  has  transplanted 
the  \ices  and  the  infidelity  of  civilized  countries  to 
heathen  lands,  as  an  additional  barrier  to  the  progress 
of  the  gospel  ?  The  usurpation  of  territory,  opfi'es- 
sion,  licentiousness  in  new  forms  and  as  a  system, 
fraud  and  injustice,  have  commonly  marked  the  intro- 
duction of  civilization  among  a  people  unattended  by 
Christianity.  Witness  British  India.  Such  civihza- 
tion,  perpetrated  in  the  name  of  a  Christian  nation, 
has  served  only  to  bring  Christianity  into  disrepute 
before  its  coming.  Christianity  in  time  may  coiTect 
these  monstrous  evils,  but,  as  we  see  in  France,  the 
highest  state  of  civilization  itself  needs  the  reforming 
power  of  vital  Christianity.  But  where  Christianity 
goes  among  a  people  civilization  invariably  follows. 
The  tribes  of  the  wilderness  are  no  long-er  wandering 
and  untutored  when  they  have  received  the  gospel ; 
the  inhabitants  of  the  islands  are  no  lona^er  savasre  and 
intractable  when  the  Christian  missionary  has  set  foot 
upon  their  shores.  Is  it  not  passing  strange,  that  a 
man  who  has  heard  the  name  of  the  Sandwich  Island 
nation,  should  suffer  any  philosophical  theory  about 
the  progress  of  civilization  to  awaken  a  doubt  as  to 


46  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

the  present  utility  of  missionary  operations  ?  Yet  so 
it  is ;  such  doubts  exist,  and  the  cause  of  missions 
languishes. 

A  single  fact  touching  the  Sandwich  Islands  should 
set  ^tliis  question  forever  at  rest.  When  the  first 
missionaries  from  this  country  visited  those  islands, 
tliere  was  no  written  language,  and  no  community  of 
interest  among  their  inhabitants,  notwithstanding  their 
commercial  relations  to  tlie  civilized  world.  Now,  as 
the  direct  result  of  missionary  laboi*,  a  large  annual 
appropriation  is  made  by  tlie  Sandwich  Island  govern- 
ment for  the  support  of  common  schools. 

The  idea  that  an  attempt  to  convert  the  world 
before  the  coming  of  Christ  would  be  prenuiture  and 
unavailing,  is  advanced  by  many  as  an  objection  to 
the  work  of  missions  as  now  conducted,  and  leads 
them  to  withhold  their  co-operation.  Of  course  we 
can  not  enter  here  into  any  discussion  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  second  advent.  The  manner  of  Christ's  appear- 
ing, the  place  and  character  of  His  reign,  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  present  question.  That  question  is, 
whether  His  promised  advent,  in  whatever  form,  war- 
rants our  remaining  in  a  state  of  inglorious  inactivity, 
or  summons  us  to  redoubled  effort.     This  question  is 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  4T 

already  answered  in  what  was  said  of  the  concurrence 
of  God's  providential  visitations  with  the  spread  of  the 
gospel.  What  is  the  setting  up  of  Christ's  kingdom 
among  men,  whether  He  be  visible  or  invisible  ? 
What  is  the  essential  thing  about  it  ?  The  universal 
exercise  of  faith  and  love  toward  Him ;  the  universal 
practice  of  His  principles.  But  this  state  of  things  we 
have  the  means  of  promoting — the  very  best  means — 
means  appointed  by  Christ  Himself.  These  means  we 
are  commanded  to  employ ;  and  shall  we  hide  our 
talent  in  a  napkin  because  our  Lord  has  gone  into  a 
far  country,  and  we  knoAV  not  how  soon  He  will 
return  ? 

That  hesitancy  to  engage  in  present  missionary  ope- 
rations which  arises  from  a  fear  of  forestalling  the 
divine  purpose,  is  but  another  form  of  that  fatalism 
which  has  already  been  exposed.  In  this  instance, 
fatalism,  instead  of  summarily  disposing  of  all  respon- 
sibility for  the  state  of  the  heathen  world  by  a  decree 
of  God,  professes  to  anticipate  with  great  delight  the 
certain  accomplishment  of  the  prophecy  of  the  ingath- 
ering of  the  Gentiles,  when  God's  selected  time  shall 
come.  Now  there  is  but  one  instance  in  the  history 
of  the  Church  in  which    God's  people   have  been 


48  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

autliorized  to  suspend  their  missionary  activity  until 
His  selected  time  should  arrive,  and  that  was  when 
the  first  disciples  were  commanded  to  tarry  at  Jeru- 
salem until  they  should  receive  the  baptism  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  Ever  since  the  day  of  Pentecost  the 
work  has  been  onward  ;  Christ  has  granted  His  serv- 
ants no  remission.  No  one  who  believes  in  the  fore- 
knowledge and  the  providential  government  of  God 
can  doubt  that  He  has  a  selected  time  for  tlic  conver- 
sion of  tlie  world,  although  that  time  may  yet  be  far 
distant.  But  it  can  not  be  viewed  as  a  time  fixed  ar- 
bitrarily, without  reference  to  the  means  by  Avhich  the 
work  should  be  accomphshed.  It  is  the  time  o(  jjossi- 
hilitij  rather  than  of  desire  ;  as  early  in  the  history  of 
the  race  as  the  resistible  nature  of  moral  influences 
and  the  inefficiency  of  human  instrumentality  would 
admit,  though  not  so  early  as  a  Being  of  supreme 
benevolence  could  wish.     There  can  be  no  greater 

o 

restraint  therefore  on  divine  influence  than  that  im- 
posed by  a  devout  waiting  for  God  to  do  His  own 
work. 

We  are  far  from  intimating  that  any  plan  of  God. 
any  purpose  which  He  has  formed  as  the  providential 
Governor  of  the  woild,  can  be  defeated,  or,  in  the 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  49 

common  acception  of  the  term,  can  even  be  delayed 
by  men.  "  He  worketli  all  tilings  after  the  counsel 
of  His  own  will."  But  the  benevolent  feehngs  and 
wishes  of  God  toward  men  may  be  disregarded,  and 
the  influences  by  which  as  a  moral  Governor  He 
would  secm-e  the  moral  perfection  of  men  may  be  re- 
strained and  counteracted.  The  will  of  God  expressed 
in  the  form  of  a  purpose  that  an  event  shall  take 
place,  can  never  be  resisted ;  the  will  of  God  in  the 
form  of  a  preference  that  an  event  should  take  place 
rather  than  its  opposite,  as  for  example  that  men 
should  be  holy  rather  than  sinful,  is  not  only  capable 
of  being  resisted,  but  is  resisted  whenever  the  moral 
law  is  disobeyed.  And  it  is  matter  of  grave  accusa- 
tion in  the  Bible  against  men,  that  they  resist  those 
moral  influences,  not  excepting  a  direct  influence  from 
God  Himself,  which  are  fitted  to  lead  them  to  repent- 
ance and  a  new  life.  "  Ye  do  always  resist  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

Startling  as  the  sentiment  may  appear,  it  is  yet 
true,  that  men  can  and  do  impose  restraints  upon  that 
divine  influence  which  would  otherwise  be  put  forth 
for  their  own  good  and  the  good  of  others  ;  and  the 
providential  purposes  of  God,  so  far  forth  as  they 
3 


50  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

may  be  sui)posed  to  have  contemplated  that  fact,  may- 
be said  to  be  influenced  by  il. 

We  would  have  those  timid  Christians,  who  are  so 
fearful  of  being  too  forward  in  the  service  of  Christ, 
picture  to  themselves  the  reception  which  some  toil- 
worn  missionary,  a  Brainerd,  a  Martyn,  a  Schwartz, 
would,  on  their  principles,  receive  at  the  gates   of 
glory.     Instead  of  being  welcomed  by  exulting  hea- 
ven to    the   joy  of   his    Lord,   he  would  ratlier   be 
chided  by  that  Lord  for  his  presumptous  zeal,  and  his 
■waste  of  time  and  influence ;  while  he  who  scarcely 
offered  a  prayer,  or  lent  a  dollar,  or  lifted  a  finger  to 
save  the  world,  lest  God  should  be  glorified  before  the 
time,  would  be  received  with  the  honors  of  the  good 
and  faithful  servant.    Nay.  let  there  be  a  truce  to  such 
folly.     Let  us  give  place  not  for  a  moment  to  a  skep- 
ticism so  dishonorable  to  God,  so  disastrous  to  men. 
They  who  on  such  a  plea  withhold  their  co-operation 
from  tliis  enterprise,  can  find  in  Scripture  but  one 
example  of  alarm  at  premature  activity;  not  in  the 
martyred  souls  who  cry  from  beneath  the  altar,  "  0 
LoT«d.  how  long  ;"  not  in  the  angels  who  pant  to  bear 
good-will  to  men;  but  in  that  infernal  legion  who 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  51 

cried  out  at  the  approach  of  Christ,  "  Art  thou  come 
to  torment  us  before  the  time  V 

Were  it  possible  for  us  in  any  way  to  anticipate 
God's  selected  time  for  the  world's  conversion,  who 
can  doubt  that  the  Master  would  exclaim  with  joyful 
emphasis,  "  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servants." 

4.  There  is  another  topic  in  connection  with  the 
missionary  enterprise,  respecting  which  there  is  not  a 
little  skepticism  in  the  Church,  and  that  is.  The  prdc- 
ticabilitij  of  evangelizing  the  world  at  all  hyany  known 
instrumentalities.  Doubts  on  this  point  arise  from  a 
mere  external  view  of  the '  obstacles  to  be  overcome, 
and  of  the  means  to  be  employed,  and  from  an  under- 
estimate of  what  has  actually  been  done  with  a  very 
limited  use  of  these  same  means.  Looking  upon  the 
moral  map  of  the  world,*ve  see  much  in  the  wide- 
spread gloom  of  heathenism  to  dishearten  us.  Re- 
flecting upon  the  history  of  the  race,  upon  the  perti- 
nacity w^ith  which  superstition  and  idolatry  have  main- 
tained their  ground,  upon  the  extent  t©  which  false 
systems  of  religion  are  not  only  allied  but  interlinked 
with  the  political  institutions  and  the  manners  and 
customs  of  the  people,  the  strong  hold  which  they 
have  upon  the  mass,  and  the  various  forms  of  self- 


52  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

interest  concerned  in  sustaining  them,  Avhen  we  reflect 
upon  all  this,  the  work  appears  truly  formidable. 
And  when  in  opposition  to  all  this  array,  we  can 
bring  into  the  field  but  a  few  hundred  missionaries, 
with  their  presses  and  schools,  and  like  simple 
arrangements,  we  do  at  times  feel  the  force  of  the 
Avorldling's  sneer,  that  we  are  engaged  in  a  Quixotic 
warfare.  But  when  we  take  a  higher  stand-point, 
and  look  upon  these  ancient  and  diversified  systems 
of  idolatry  as  but  different  combinations  or  develop- 
ments of  the  gi-eat  principle  of  moral  evil,  and  on 
the  other,  upon  missionary  arrange«ients  as  but  so 
many  points  of  contact  of  the  Spirit  of  God  with  that 
monster  and  antao^onist  evil,  the  doubts  and  fears  sucr- 
gested  by  the  former  comparison  vanish,  and  hope 
resumes  its  sway. 

Many,  however,  rest  in  the  external  view,  with  its 
attendant  skepticism  and  fears.  Some  of  these  are 
persons  of  a  sanguine  temperament,  who,  liaving  ex- 
pected  more  than  could  be  realized  from  present 
efforts,  now  luiderrate  the  success  of  those  efforts, 
and  abandon  themselves  to  despondency.  Mr.  Fos- 
ter gave  vent  to  his  feelings  in  this  strain.  "  No  one," 
he  says,  "  who  did  not  witness  it,  can  have  any  ade- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 


5^ 


quate  conception  of  the  commotion  there  was  in  sus- 
ceptible and  inflammable  .spirits,"  when  the  mission- 
ary enterprise  was  commenced.  "  The  proclamation 
went  forth,  'overturn,  overturn,  overturn,'  and  there 
seemed  to  be  a  responsive  earthquake  in  the  nations. 
The  vain,  short-sighted  seers  of  us  had  all  our  enthu- 
siasm ready  to  receive  the  magnificent  change,  the 
do^vnfall  of  all  old  and  corrupt  institutions,  the  explo- 
sion of  prejudices  ;  the  demolition  of  the  strongholds 
of  ignorance,  superstition,  and  spiritual  with  all  other 
despotism  ;  man,  on  the  point  of  being  set  free  for 
a  noble  career  of  knowledge,  liberty,  philanthropy, 
virtue,  and  all  that,  and  all  that.  A  most  shallow 
judgment,  a  pitiable  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  man, 
was  betrayed  in  these  elated  presumptions.  But  they 
so  possessed  themselves  of  the  mind,  as  to  prepare  it 
to  feel  a  bitterness  of  disappointment  as  time  went  on 
through  so  many  lustrums,  and  accomplished  so  nig- 
gardly a  portion  of  all  the  dream."* 

Had  Mr.  Foster  lived  a  few  years  longer,  he  would 
have  seen  that  this  judgment  after  all  was  not  quite 
so  shallow,  nor  the  dream  altogether  a  delusion. 

But  though  the  extravagant  anticipations  of  some 
*  Letter  to  Dr.  Harris. 


54  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

have  not  been  realized,  it  does  not  follow  that  nothing 
has  been  done.  The  missionary  enterprise  is  very  far 
from  being  a  failure.  Success  in  it  has  been  fully 
proportioned  to  effort,  and  has  exceeded  the  expecta- 
tions of  dispassionate  observers.  We  can  not  here 
enumerate  all  the  results  of  missionary  labor — the  lo- 
cahzing  of  various  wandering  tribes,  the  introduction 
of  the  useful  arts  and  employments  of  civilized  life, 
the  formation  of  written  languages,  the  general  diffu- 
sion of  knowledge,  the  improvement  of  civil  institu- 
tions, the  promotion  of  morality,  the  prevention  of 
war,  the  extinction  of  slavery,  the  elevation  of  woman, 
the  abolition  of  idolatry  with  its  vices  and  crimes,  the 
establishment  of  Christian  churches,  and  the  hopeful 
conversion  of  tens  of  thousands,  many  of  Avhom  have 
already  departed  in  the  faith,  so  that  "  death  is  be- 
coming incomparably  more  tributary  to  Hea^-en,  and 
the  ancient  barrier  between  the  realms  of  Asia  and  the 
kingdom  of  eternal  glory  is  beginning  to  break  down." 
All  this  on  heathen  ground,  and  mainly  in  half  a  cen- 
twry.  And  this  has  been,  too,  for  the  most  part,  only 
in  the  way  of  preparation.  The  timber  has  been  hewn 
down,  the  stone  has  been  cut  out ;  but  when  the  rude 
and  scattered  materials  are  brought  together,  the  tern- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  55 

pie  will  rise  without  the  sound  of  implements,  and  as 
if  by  some  magic  power. 

But  some,  overlooking  all  this,  are  waiting  for  the 
ushering  in  of  a  new  dispensation,  as  the  signal  for 
entering  upon  the  work  of  converting  the  world  ;  con- 
sequently they  disparage  present  efforts.  Their  no- 
tions as  to  what  that  dispensation  is  to  be,  and  how  it 
is  to  be  ushered  in,  are  sufficiently  vague.  The  min- 
istry of  angels  is  not  to  be  expected  ;  the  age  of  mira- 
cles is  gone  ;  there  is  to  be  no  further  revelation ;  mere 
judgments  or  other  providential  -visitations  will  not, 
of  themselves,  accomplish  the  work ;  and  we  already 
possess  all  the  means  in  kind,  which  are  needful  to 
accomplish  it.  That  there  will  be,  in  some  sense,  a 
new  era  in  this  work,  we  do  not  doubt — an  era  of  un- 
exampled progress.  But  such  an  era  is  not  to  be 
waited  for ;  it  is  to  be  brought  about.  It  will  be 
characterized  by  more  signal  interpositions  of  Provi- 
dence ;  more  rapid  changes  in  the  political  world,  con- 
spiring to  give  success  to  the  truth ;  by  the  general 
diffusion  of  religious  liberty ;  by  a  more  hearty  co- 
operation of  Christians  in  the  work  of  saving  men ; 
which  unity,  thus  practically  realized,  will,  of  itself, 
act  as  a  means  of  conversion ;  by  more  of  individual 


56  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

consecration  and  zeal,  as  distinguished  from  associated 
effort ;  and  most  of  all  will  it  be  characterized  as  an 
era  of  elevated  piety.  Skepticism  will  be  rooted  out 
of  the  Church ;  and  faith,  love,  hope,  joy,  and  a  holy 
zeal  will  combine  to  usher  in  the  latter-day  glory. 
Happy  will  it  be  for  us,  if  we  can  do  aught  to  intro- 
duce that  era,  instead  of  moping  in  our  cold-hearted 
skepticism. 

11.  We  have  now  stated  the  principal  grounds  of 
skepticism  relative  to  the  missionary  enterprise,  and 
have  endeavored  to  show  their  fallacy.  It  may  seem 
strange,  that  in  the  present  stage  of  this  work,  instead 
of  making  its  progress  and  successes  the  theme  of 
delightful  and  exulting  contemplation,  we  should  have 
occupied  so  large  a  portion  of  our  essay  in  an  attempt 
to  expose  and  refute  the  objections  to  that  work.  It  is 
not  that  Ave  are  unmindful  of  what  has  been  done,  or 
distrustful  of  the  future.  But  is  it  not  manifest  that 
this  cause  needs  a  higher  impulse ;  that  the  interest  in 
the  work  of  missions  is  not  at  all  in  proportion  to  the 
present  resources  of  the  Church,  or  to  the  present 
facilities  for  missionary  operations  abroad  ?  Taking 
the  annual  income  of  the  American  Board  as  a  measure 
of  that  interest,  does  an  average  contribution  of  a  shil- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  57 

ling  each,  on  the  part  of  the  members  of  the  chmxhes 
which  it  represents,  betoken  any  very  ardent,  self- 
denying  devotion  to  this  work  ?  Does  the  aA^erage 
attendance  at  the  monthly  concert,  or  the  whole 
number  of  young  men  who  offer  themselves  for  this 
service,  indicate  any  excess  of  zeal  on  account  of  it  ? 
Has  not  the  work  of  missions  as  prosecuted  by  us 
been  for  years  at  a  stand  in  the  apparent  interest  of 
the  churches?  We  have  had  various  means  of  in- 
citement to  bring  us  out  of  this  state  of  fixity,  but  in 
vain.  We  have'  felt  the  pressure  of  debt ;  Ave  have 
aroused  to  shake  that  off,  and  now  we  are  very  cau- 
tious not  to  undertake  so  much  as  to  run  the  risk  of 
debt  again.  The  providence  of  God  has  opened  vast 
fields  before  us ;  nations  hitherto  inaccessible  have 
been  brought  within  our  reach ;  and  to  this  incitement 
of  demand  is  added  the  incitement  of  glorious,  unpar- 
alleled success ;  the  shouts  of  the  reapers  are  heard 
from  the  plains  of  India  and  of  Persia,  and  from  the 
shores  of  the  Euxine.  And  still  the  Avork  drags  here 
at  home  ;  it  is  doubtful  each  year  Avhether  the  church- 
es will  do  as  much  as  they  did  the  last ;  it  is  a  prob- 
lem by  Avhat  economy  shall  missionary  societies  keep 
out  of  debt,  and  that,  when  in  a  single  day  Ave  might 
3* 


58  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

bring  together  from  tlie  churches  in  New  York  or 
Boston  a  hundred  men  who  could  jointly  defray  the 
annual  expenses  of  the  foreign  missionary  work  with- 
out feeling  the  cost.  Is  there  not  then  a  hindrance 
to  this  work  which  has  not  yet  been  reached?  And 
where  shall  that  hindrance  be  found,  but  in  that  very 
skepticism  which  has  now  been  exposed  ? 

Such  skepticism  paralyzes  the  arm  of  the  Church. 
It  indisposes  those  who  indulge  it  for  the  use  of  the 
means  necessary  to  carry  on  such  a  work.  If  one 
is  in  doubt  whether  the  heathen  would  really  be  ben- 
efited by  the  gospel — if  he  does  not  feel  that  they  are 
in  perishing  need  of  it — of  course  he  will  do  little  or 
nothing  to  send  it  to  them.  If  one  is  in  doubt  whether 
God  really  intends  to  accomplish  the  conversion  of  the 
world  to  Himself,  whether  it  is  His  will  that  the  gos- 
pel should  be  everywhere  propagated,  of  course  he 
will  scarcely  make  an  attempt  to  evangelize  the  Avorld. 
K  one  is  in  doubt  whether  this  is  the  time  for  en- 
gaging in  this  work,  he  will  not  engage  in  it  heartily, 
if  at  all.  If  one  has  little  confidence  in  the  present 
means,  he  will  act  with  little  energy,  or  keep  aloof 
from  such  impracticable  schemes.  Thus  the  work  is 
crippled  on  every  hand  by  unbelief.    Unbelief,  besides 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  59 

restraining  the  energies  of  the  Church,  incapacitates 
those  who  indulge  it  for  appreciating  tlic  work  of  the 
Lord,  and  for  rendering  Him  the  glory  which  is  His 
due.  In  this  way  it  puts  a  restraint  upon  divine  in- 
fluence as  well  as  upon  human  energy.  God  will  not 
dishonor  Himself  by  courting  the  confidence  of  those 
who,  like  Israel  of  old,  are  unbelieving,  in  spite  of  all 
His  marvelous  works.  Viewed  as  a  check  upon 
Christian  activity,  and  an  obstacle  to  the  operations  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  unbelief  must  be  confessed  to  be  the 
great  hindrance  to  the  missionary  work. 

III.  But  if  skepticism  be  the  main  hindrance  to  the 
missionary  work — a  work  so  approved  of  God  in  His 
Word  and  providence — how  unreasonable  and  wicked 
is  it  for  any  to  indulge  such  a  state  of  mind. 

Look  at  the  course  of  Providence  in  relation  to  the 
missionary  work ;  especially  at  events  of  recent  origin, 
within  the  range  of  our  own  observation.  In  no  pe- 
riod of  the  history  of  redemption,  not  even  when  pre- 
paring the  fullness  of  time  for  the  Messiah's  advent, 
has  the  providence  of  God  been  more  marked  than  of 
late  years,  in  its  bearing  on  the  extension  of  the  Re- 
deemer's kingdom.  What  facihties  have  we  for  com- 
munication with  all  parts  of  the  world ;  with  what  se- 


60  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

curity  can  missionaries  now  labor  in  almost  any  part 
of  the  globe.  IIow  has  the  British  empire,  like  the 
Roman  empire  of  old,  made  a  highway  among  the 
nations  and  across  the  seas,  for  the  advance  of  Chris- 
tianity !  How  large  a  portion  of  the  globe  "  appears 
to  be  placi'd  by  Providence  at  the  disposal  of  Chris- 
tendom !"  Is  it  nothing  in  relation  to  our  work,  that 
India  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  Great  Britain,  rather 
than  of  Russia  or  of  Rome,  and  that  a  more  wise  and 
liberal  policy  pervades  the  counsels  of  her  rulers  ?  Is 
it  nothing  that  the  pride  of  China  has  been  broken  by 
a  rod  of  iron,  that  her  ports  are  open  to  the  commerce 
of  Christian  nations,  and  that  tolerance  is  jfranted  to 
their  faith  ?  Religious  toleration  we  have,  too,  even 
in  Turkey,  guarded  by  the  sovereign  edict,  though 
sometimes  evaded  by  the  shifts  of  private  malice. 
No  system  of  religion  but  Christianity  in  some  form, 
is  now  gaining  ground  in  the  world.  The  most  an- 
cient, extensive,  and  powerful  systems,  Brahmanism, 
Buddhism,  and  Mahometanism,  are  evidontlv  waning. 
Christianity  alone  is  vital,  is  aggressive,  is  advancing. 
The  providence  of  God  in  respect  to  this  work  would 
form  one  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  the  his- 
tory of  llis  go^•ernment.     Never  has  He  stamped  any 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  61 

work  as  more  peculiarly  His  own.  It  has  the  seal  of 
His  spirit.  Against  such  evidence  that  this  is  the 
Lord's  work,  as  is  furnished  by  the  whole  current  of 
His  providence,  is  it  not  unreasonable,  and  even  pre- 
sumptuous, to  doubt  it  ?  In  view  of  the  recorded 
prayers  of  holy  men  for  the  coming  of  Christ's  king- 
dom, prayers  indicted  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  taught 
by  Christ  Himself ;  in  view  of  the  predicted  triumphs 
of  the  gospel,  yet  unaccomplished  ;  in  view  of  the  un- 
revoked, unlimited  command  of  Christ,  "  Go,  teach 
all  nations,"  is  it  not  wicked  to  give  place  to  unbelief? 
1^0  Christian  can  be  skeptical  in  this  matter  inno- 
cently. While  he  is  doubting  whether  the  heathen 
are  in  danger,  they  are  perishing  b}''  thousands ;  while 
he  is  doubting  whether  God  intends  the  salvation 
of  the  world.  His  providence  pauses,  as  it  were,  re- 
luctantly, in  the  mighty  work ;  while  he  is  doubting 
whether  this  is  the  time  for  action,  the  seed-time  of  the 
millennium  is  wearing  away ;  while  he  is  doubting 
whether  the  work  can  be  done  at  all,  he  is  makinof  it 
sure  that  it  will  not  be  accomplished  by  this  genera- 
tion. How  cruel  to  the  heathen  are  such  doubts  as 
these.  Wo  to  the  world,  because  of  the  unbelief  of 
the  Church. 


62  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

This  unbelief  is  disastrous  in  proportion  to  the  in- 
terests at  stake.  The  salvation  of  millions  from  eter- 
nal death  is  at  stake  here.  To  accomplish  a  work  so 
vast,  there  is  needed  a  faith  which  shall  grasp  the 
principles  on  which  that  work  proceeds ;  which  shall 
firmly  ally  the  soul  with  Christ  and  His  cause  ;  which 
will  scarcely  brook  a  doubt  or  fear.  A  faith  that 
falls  short  of  this,  falls  short  of  the  work,  falls  short 
of  the  demands  of  God  in  His  providence.  God  is 
indicating  to  His  people  His  readiness  to  do  mighty 
works  by  their  instrumentality.  We  see  signs  of  His 
coming  no  less  portentous  than  if  huge  meteors  blazed 
along  the  sky,  and  the  flaming  host  were  marshaled 
there  for  battle.  The  stars  in  their  courses  fight 
aofainst  the  enemies  of  God.  Christ  is  abroad  amono^ 
the  nations,  dashing  them  together  like  vessels  of  clay, 
or  stilling  the  noise  of  war  and  the  tumult  of  the  peo- 
ple. There  is  no  mistaking  the  signs  of  these  times. 
Great  changes  are  at  hand.  All  things  are  tending 
toward  the  higher  development  of  man.  The  world 
is  full  of  revolutions  ;  revolutions  not  merely  of  blood, 
but  in  the  thoughts  and  habits  of  men,  in  the  policy 
of  nations,  in  systems  of  education,  of  religion,  of  gov- 
ernment, in  every  thing  affecting  the  welfare  of  the 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  63 

race.  We  are  nearing  the  moral  crisis  of  the  Avorld, 
when  after  so  lono-  a  struojo-le,  the  social,  intellectual, 
political  and  moral  elevation  of  mankind  may  be  final- 
ly secured.  Satan  is  driven  from  one  hold  to  another, 
and  foiled  at  every  turn.  Expedients  are  failing  him. 
He  stirs  up  war,  and  it  becomes  the  occasion  of  spread- 
ing the  kingdom  of  peace.  He  excites  persecution, 
but  instead  of  exterminating  the  saints  of  God,  it 
brings  about  full  liberty  of  conscience,  and  favors  the 
organization  of  independent  Christian  churches.  He 
panders  to  superstition  by  devices  so  successful  in  the 
dark  ages,  but  only  provokes  another  reformation  in 
the  land  of  Luther.  His  old  arts  will  not  serve  him 
now.  He  rages  up  and  down  in  the  earth  like  a^wild 
beast  driven  from  his  lair.  He  lashes  himself  into 
fury,  knowing  that  his  rage  is  impotent.  He  calls 
upon  his  ancient  allies,  but  they  are  gone.  The  foui 
great  monarchies  are  fallen.  The  Babylonian  empire, 
the  Persian,  the  Macedonian,  the  Roman,  all  are  gone. 
There  is  no  great  power  of  the  earth  by  which  he 
can  now  hope  to  strengthen  his  cause.  The  gods  of 
ancient  Greece  and  Rome  are  gone ;  Jupiter  no  lon- 
ger thunders ;  the  sounding  chariot  of  Mars  no  longer 
shakes  the  sky.     Thor,  too,  and  Odin,  have  departed. 


64  PRELIMINARY    ESSAY. 

The  Scandinavian  deities  arc  buried  in  tlie  oblivion 
of  their  worshipers.  He  turns  to  the  thirty  milhon 
gods  of  India;  but  they  arc  filled  with  consternation 
at  wats  and  temples  deserted,  at  Christian  schools  and 
churches  springing  up  around  them.  He  looks  to 
the  shrine  of  Buddh  ;  but  the  high-priest  of  that  wide- 
spread system  is  mourning  over  its  weakness  and  de- 
cay. He  turns  to  the  region  of  the  false  prophet ;  but 
Islamism  is  under  bonds  to  the  Christian  powers  of 
Europe.  He  comes  at  length  to  his  long-tried  and 
faithful  ally  at  Rome  ;  but  even  he  affects  the  new 
order  of  things,  and  feels  the  spirit  of  the  age.  Nay, 
the  triple  crown  itself  is  endangered  by  repeated 
throes  of  revolution.  Thus  the  great  adversarj^  is 
made  to  feel  that  his  hour  is  well  nigh  come.  Tlic 
last  links  of  the  chain  that  is  to  bind  him  in  the  pit 
are  forging.  Hell  stands  aghast  at  the  impending 
ruin  of  her  chief.  The  interest  of  heaven  becomes  in- 
tense as  a  new  seal  is  opened  and  another  trumpet 
is  about  to  sound.  Shall  this  be  the  blast  of  victory  ? 
Shall  the  shout  come  up,  "The  kingdoms  of  this 
world  are  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  His 
Christ?"  AVhat  can  hinder  it  ?  Satan,  with  all  his 
forces  crippled,  his  allies  beaten  and  deserting,  his  in- 


PRELIMINARY    ESSAY.  65 

genuity  exhausted,  his  mahce  spent,  musi  now  be 
crushed.  Ah,  he  has  one  hope  left !  He  knows  man 
too  well  to  fear.  x\gain  and  again  has  God  led  His 
people  to  the  verge  of  victory,  and  they  have  turned 
back  like  Israel  from  the  border  of  Canaan.  Again 
and  again  have  powerful  and  well-directed  assaults  on 
the  kingdom  of  darkness  failed  in  the  midst  of  suc- 
cess, because  the  men  were  wanting,  and  the  spirit  was 
wanting,  to  improve  the  advantage.  The  last  hope 
of  Satan  is  in  the  timidity  and  doubtfulness  of  the 
Church.  He  scatters  distrust  and  fear  among  God's 
people.  They  hesitate,  they  fall  back.  Their  skep- 
ticism checks  the  auspicious  onset,  prolongs  the  reign 
of  darkness,  abandons  the  world  to  guilt  and  wretch- 
edness ;  and  while  God  would  give  a  triumph  to 
heaven  and  a  millennium  to  earth,  this  gives  a  jubilee 
to  hell ! 

J.  P.  T. 

New  York,  Nov.  1850. 


THE 


GLORY  OF  THE  AGE. 


THEY    CAME    NOT    TO    THE    HELP    OF   THE    LORD,    TO    THE 

HELP    OF    THE    LORD    AGAINST    THE    MIGHTY. 

JUDGES,    V.    23. 

The  practice  may  be  too  frequent,  of  accommoda- 
ting objects  and  effects  in  the  world  of  nature,  the  re- 
lations and  transactions  in  that  of  liuman  society,  and 
the  merely  secular  facts  of  the  Scripture  history  to 
the  purpose  of  representing,  in  the  way  of  formal  and 
protracted  similitude,  the  truths  and  interests  of  relig- 
ion. We  may  observe,  however,  that  it  seems  to  the 
honor  of  religion  that  so  many  things  can  be  accom- 
modated to  its  illustration,  without  any  recourse  to 
that  perverted  ingenuity  which  fancifully  descries  or 
invents  resemblances.  It  is  an  evident  and  remark- 
able fact,  that  there  is  a  certain  principle  of  corre- 
spondence to  religion  throughout  the  economy  of  the 
world.  Things  bearing  an  apparent  analogy  to  its 
truths,  sometimes  more  prominently,  sometimes  more 
abstrusely,  present  themselves  on  all  sides  to  a  thought- 
ful mind.     He  that  made  all  things  for  Himself  ap- 


68  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

pears  to  have  willed  tliat  they  should  be  a  great  sys- 
tem of  emblems,  reflecting  or  shadowing  that  system 
of  principles,  which  is  the  true  theory  concerning 
Him,  and  our  relations  to  Him.  So  that  relio^ion, 
standing  up  in  grand  parallel  to  an  infinity  of  things, 
receives  their  testimony  and  homage,  and  speaks  with 
a  voice  which  is  echoed  by  the  creation. 

It  may,  therefore,  be  permitted  us  to  fix  upon  a  cir- 
cumstance in  the  political  conduct  of  an  ancient  peo- 
ple, as  adapted  to  suggest  more  than  it  essentially 
contains,  and  to  carry  our  thoughts,  by  analogy,  to  a 
kind  of  duty  and  of  delinquency  more  directly  related 
to  religion.  Under  this  license  our  subject  is  intro- 
duced by  a  sentence  pronounced,  we  may  presume  at 
the  divine  dictation,  in  reproach  of  a  refusal  to  co-oper- 
ate in  a  very  different  kind  of  service  from  that  which 
we  have,  on  the  present  occasion,  to  recommend. 

The  negative  form  of  the  charge — They  came  not 
to  the  help  of  the  Lord — may  remind  us  of  the 
grievous  fact,  that  by  far  the  greater  number  of  the 
judicial  negative  statements  in  the  Bible,  respecting 
the  conduct  of  men,  are  accusations.  The  mention 
that  they  did  not  do  the  thing  in  question,  is  very 
generally  the  implied  assertion  that  they  ought  to 
have  done  it.  And  the  consideration  becomes  still 
more  awful  upon  recollection  that  we  are  told,  that 
the  last  neoative  statement  to  be  uttered  on  earth,  and 
uttered  by  the  greatest  voice,  will  be  with  an  empha- 
sis of  condemnation — "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not — /'* 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  69 

Observe  how  much  guilt  there  may  be  m  mere  omis- 
sion, and  that,  even  though  we  should  suppose  the 
persons  who  decline  the  one  specific  duty  to  be  oc- 
cupied while  neglecting  it  in  employments  in  them- 
selves innocent  and  laudable.     It  is  very  possible  that 
the  people  of  whose  absence  from  the  appointed  scene 
of  action  we   have   just  read  the   accusing   record, 
might  have  brought  a  plea  on  this  ground  against  the 
justice  of  the  consequent  malediction.     They  might 
perhaps  have  had  to  say,  that  they  were  diligently 
prosecuting  the  labors  of  their  rural  economy,  which 
there  might  be,  at  the  time,  particular  reasons  why 
they  should  not  suspend  ;  or  that  they  were  intent  on 
certain  plans  for  rectifying  disorders  in  their  society ; 
or  that  they  were  employing  the  time  in  some  peculi- 
arly solemn  forms  of  worship,  perhaps  imploring  the 
intervention  of  Heaven  in  the  alarming  crisis,  under  a 
persuasion   of  the   perfect  sufficiency  of  the  divine 
power  independently  of  human  means.     But  no  such 
pleas   would   have  availed   to   avert  the   vindicative 
sentence  which  the  prophetess  was  instiaicted  to  pro- 
nounce on  their  refusal  to  do  that  one  thing,  which 
the  summons  of  unquestionable  authority  had  signified 
to  be,   in  that  juncture,   their  precise  duty.     Such 
allegations  might  indeed  have  been  dishonestly  made, 
as  an  attempt  to  vail  selfishness  and  cowardice,  the 
real    causes  probably  for    withholding  the    required 
service ;  and  then  the  hypocrisy  would  have  incurred 
a  prompt  exposure  and  a  severity  of  rebuke  ;  but  even 


70  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

had  they  been  made  sincerely,  and  proved  to  be  ti-ue, 
they  would  not  have  arrested  nor  revoked  the  con- 
demnation. The  appeal  of  the  defaulters  would  have 
been  silenced  by  the  decision,  that  it  is  of  the  essence 
of  disobedience  and  rebellion  to  assume  to  make  com- 
mutations and  substitutions  of  duty,  to  transfer  obli- 
gation to  where  it  would  be  less  inconv(;nient  that  it 
should  be  enforced,  and  to  affect  to  render,  in  the  form 
of  preferred  and  easier  services,  an  equivalent  for  the 
obedience  which  the  righteous  and  supreme  authority 
has  distinctly  required  to  be  rendered  in  that  harder 
service  which  is  evaded. 

Suppose  these  people  to  have  really  been  of  a  quiet 
and  harmless  disposition,  and  assiduous  in  the  useful 
vocations  of  ordinary  life,  there  may  appear,  notwith- 
standing the  urgency  of  the  occasion,  something  hard 
in  the  alternative  they  were  placed  in,  of  suddenly 
abandoning  their  homes  to  rush  into  the  perils  of  bat- 
tle, or  suffering  all  that  was  denounced  in  so  heavy 
an  execration.  And,  in  the  retrospect  of  the  many 
forms  into  which  human  duty  has  been  diversified  by 
occasions,  as  displayed  in  the  Bible  and  other  records, 
"we  see  many  situations  of  exceeding  hardship — not 
meaning,  by  such  a  term,  an  imputation  on  that  Au- 
thority which  prescribed  their  arduous  exercises.  The 
great  contest  against  evil,  in  all  its  modes  of  invasion 
of  this  world  (but  our  reference  is  chiefly  to  those 
requiring  men's  resistance  in  the  religious  capacity), 
has  been  a  service  assigned  in  every  possible  differ- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  71 

ence  of  circumstance  and  proportion ;  and  some  men's 
shares  have  involved  a  violence  of  exertion,  or  a 
weight  of  suffering,  which  we  look  upon  with  wonder 
and  almost  with  terror.  We  shudder  to  think  of 
mortals  like  ourselves  having  been  brought  into  such 
fearful  dilemmas  between  obedience  and  guilt.  We 
shrink  from  placing  ourselves  but  in  imagination  under 
such  tests  of  fidelity  to  God  and  a  good  cause.  The 
painful  sympathy  with  those  agents  and  sufferers  ter- 
minates in  self-congratulation,  that  their  allotment  of 
duty  has  not  been  ours.  The  tacit  sentiment  is,  I  am 
very  glad  I  can  be  a  good  man  on  less  severe  con- 
ditions. 

And  the  sentiment  is  justified  by  the  necessary  and 
eternal  laws  of  our  nature.  It  may  become  an  emo- 
tion of  piety,  and  rise  in  gratitude  to  God  for  having 
appointed  us  to  a  less  formidable  service.  But  it  may 
also  be  indulged  in  such  a  manner  as  to  betray  us 
into  dangerous  delusion.  In  pleasing  ourselves  with 
the  thought  of  our  exemption  from  an  order  of  duties 
involving  the  sacrifice  of  every  thing  gratifying  ii> 
mortal  existence  but  a  good  conscience — duties  to  be 
performed  at  the  cost  of  suffering  oppressive  and  un- 
mitigated toil,  pain,  want,  reproach,  loss  of  liberty, 
and  even  of  life  itself — duties  imposing  such  a  trial  of 
fidelity  as  confessors  and  martyrs  have  sustained — we 
may  be  led  into  a  wrong  estimate  of  the  difference 
between  their  situation  and  ours,  as  if  our  obligations 
were  constituted  under  an  essentially  different  econ- 


72  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

omy.  With  an  untliinking  self-assurance  that  the 
satisfaction  we  feel  is  gratitude  to  God  for  a  less  rig- 
orous appointment,  we  may  be  making  exemptions  for 
ourselves  which  He  has  never  made.  Delighted  that 
at  the  easy  price  of  only  being  thankful  to  Him,  we 
are  allowed  to  take  so  much  indulgence,  we  may  with  a 
deluded  confidence  widen  out  the  sphere  of  privilege 
beyond  one  point,  and  beyond  another,  where  He  has 
marked  the  boundary,  with  always  the  strongest 
propensity  to  this  enlargement  on  that  side  where  the 
hardest  duties  are  placed  ;  till  the  mind  at  length  re- 
poses in  a  scheme  of  duty  adjusted  on  its  own  au- 
thority, and  far  from  coincident  with  that  which  has 
been  dictated  by  the  divine  will. 

There  is  delusion  in  our  self- congratulation  at  the 
contrast  between  what  is  enjoined  on  us  and  the  se- 
verer duties  imposed  on  some  of  our  great  Master's 
subjects,  if  we  do  not  perceive  that,  nevertheless,  the 
matter  of  our  required  service  is  of  the  very  same 
substance  (with  only  a  favorable  difference  of  mode 
•and  proportion)  as  that  which  appears  to  us  of  such 
rigor  in  theirs.  There  is  delusion,  if  we  are  permitted 
to  escape  from  the  habitual  sense  of  being,  in  the 
character  of  the  servants  of  God,  placed  under  the 
duty  and  necessity  of  an  intense  moral  warfare, 
against  powei-s  of  evil  as  real  and  palpable  as  ever 
were  encountered  in  the  field  of  battle.  Not  to  feel 
ourselves  pressed  upon  by  resistless  evidence  and 
admonition  of  this,  is  an  utter  ignorance  or  oblivion 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  73 

of  oiu'  commission  on  earth.  And  the  natural  conse- 
quence is  a  fate  like  that  of  strangers  thoughtlessly- 
straying  and  surrendering  themselves  to  sleep  in  a 
place  where  it  is  a  law  of  the  barbarian  inhabitants  to 
sacrifice  all  strangers  to  their  infernal  gods. 

Yet  there  is  in  general  so  faint  an  impression  of 
this  fact,  of  an  urgent  necessity  of  war  till  death,  as 
the  grand  business  and  obligation  of  hfe,  that,  to  the 
greater  number  of  the  persons  to  whom  we  offer  il- 
lustrations of  Christian  topics,  no  language  soimds  so 
idly,  no  figures  appear  so  insignificant,  no  forms  of 
commonplace  so  "  flat  and  unprofitable,"  as  those 
which  represent,  in  a  military  character,  the  exertions 
by  which  men  are  to  evince  themselves  the  servants 
of  God.  An  appeal  might  safely  be  made  to  the 
consciousness  of  many  hearers  and  readers  whether, 
at  the  recurrence  of  these  images  in  any  religious 
reference,  they  have  not  a  marked  sense  of  insipidity 
strongly  tending  to  disgust,  caused  in  some  degree, 
we  may  allow,  by  a  too  frequent  iteration,  but  still 
more  by  the  impression  of  unmeaningness  and  futil- 
ity in  employing  such  terms  for  such  a  subject. 

It  is  striking  to  observe,  at  the  same  time,  how 
some  of  the  persons  who  are  thus  tired  to  loathing  of 
these  images  in  their  moral  and  spuritual  apphcation, 
Nvill  disclose  then-  latent  energy  at  similar  language 
and  figures  coming  before  them  in  hteral  representa- 
tion of  war.  Most  of  the  excitable  class  of  spirits, 
whether  in  youth  or  much  more  advanced  in  life,  can 
4 


74  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

be  kindled  to  enthusiasm  by  the  grand  imagery  of 
battles  and  heroic  achievements.  Those  very  terms 
of  martial  metaphor,  under  the  spiritual  import  of 
"which  they  are  beginning,  perhaps  amid  some  relig- 
ious service,  to  sink  in  dullness  and  disgust,  may  give 
them  sudden  relief  by  diverting  the  mind  away  to  an 
imagined  scene  of  conflict ;  and  it  shall  feel  a  proud 
elation  in  passing  form  the  stale  and  sleepy  notion  of 
a  spiritual  warfare,  to  the  magnificence  of  the  combats 
which  are  displayed  in  fire  and  blood  to  the  eyes,  and 
in  thunder  to  the  ears.  The  attention  being  wholly 
withdrawn  from  the  strain  which  is  perhaps  still  pro- 
ceeding, in  words  no  longer  sensibly  heard,  to  figure 
out  the  Christian  soldier,  the  imajrination  shall  follow 
the  track  of  some  brilliant  mortal,  of  history  or  fiction, 
through  scenes  of  tumult,  and  terror,  and  noble  dar- 
ing, and  shall  adore  him  as  beheld  exulting  unhurt  in 
victory,  or  as  expiring  in  the  manner  in  which  it  is  by 
general  consent  accounted  graceful  for  a  hero  to  fall. 
The  enthusiast,  while  sitting  still  and  abstracted,  may 
be  at  moments  enchanted  into  a  kind  of  persona- 
tio*n  of  the  character,  and  glow  with  emotion  in  the 
mimic  fancy  of  acting  himself  a  part  so  splendid. 
And  these  scenes  of  fury  and  desti-uction,  thus  fer- 
vidly imagined,  shall  really  be  deemed  the  subhmest 
exhibitions  of  man,  in  which  human  energy  approaches 
nearest  to  a  rivalry  with  the  "  immortals" — for  the 
epic  diction  of  paganism  may  naturally  be  the  expres- 
sion of  sentiments  fired  by  its  spirit.     "Immortal," 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  75 

may  be  also  the  word  wliicli  he  is  silently  pronounc- 
ing in  his  adoration  of  the  personage  whose  career 
he  is  pursuing  in  reverie,  conformably  to  that  caprice 
of  human  madness  which  has  determined  the  special 
selection  of  such  an  epithet  for  bedecking  the  most 
active  dealers  in  death,  whose  exposure  to  be  smitten 
by  it  is  an  inevitable  condition  of  their  inflicting  it. 

If,  in  this  inflamed  state  of  the  mind,  the  idea  were 
again  presented  of  the  Christian  warfare,  of  a  contest 
against  principaHties  and  powers,  and  spiritual  wick- 
edness, it  would  be  repelled  with  disdain  of  the  im- 
pertinence or  arrogance  which  could  assume  for  such 
matters  any  of  the  lofty  terms  belonging,  and  (it 
would  be  proudly  said)  deservedly  applied,  to  the 
transactions  of  Trafalgar  and  Waterloo.  This  con- 
tempt may  be  felt  by  persons  to  whom  the  glories  of 
war  are  only  a  pageant  of  the  imagination ;  but  it 
would  be  a  still  stronger  sentiment  in  most  of  the  men 
who  have  actually  witnessed  and  shared  the  terrors 
and  triumphs  of  martial  exploit,  if  it  could  happen  that 
they  should  hear  the  figurative  language  in  question, 
and  lend  for  a  moment  attention  enough  to  understand 
what  it  should  mean.  In  short,  between  distaste  for 
its  insipidity  and  almost  resentful  scorn  of  its  imper- 
tinence of  pretension,  the  metaphor  would  be,  by 
most  men  of  high-toned  spirit,  flung  back  on  the  im- 
becile religionists  as  an  inane  fancy,  in  which  they 
are  seeking  to  make  for  themselves  a  compensation  for 
their  incapacity  of  any  thing  truly  great.     Let  these 


76  THE    GLORY    OF   THE    AGE  J 

wars,  enemies,  and  heroes  of  vapor,  they  would  say, 
busy  the  feeble  souls  to  which  they  can  have  the  ef- 
fect of  realities. 

But  while  this  is  their  feeling,  what  shall  we  think 
of  the  sanity  of  their  perception  ?  Alas  for  the  state 
of  the  senses,  of  the  faculties  of  apprehension,  in  those 
minds  that  have  so  little  cognizance  of  a  most  fearful 
reality  which  exists  on  every  side,  and  presses  upon 
them !  How  strange  it  is  to  see  men  in  possession  of 
a  quick  and  vigilant  faculty  for  perceiving  every  thing 
that  can  approach  them  in  hostility,  except  that  near- 
est, deadliest,  and  mightiest  enemy  of  all,  moral  evil. 
And  how  deplorable  to  see  them  prompt  in  indignation, 
instantly  in  the  attitude  of  defense  or  attack,  burning 
with  martial  spirit,  inspired  with  notions  of  glory  and 
victory,  and  at  the  same  time  turning  away  with  slight 
or  scorn  at  the  representations  by  which  divine  or  hu- 
man admonition  is  attempting  to  alarm  them  to  a  sense 
of  their  danger  from  tliat  foe,  compared  with  which  all 
the  rest  are  but  shapes  of  air !  That  creatures  should 
be  thus  maddened  with  fancies  of  the  glory  of  de- 
structive combats  with  one  another,  and  insensible  of 
the  presence  and  quality  of  that  destroyer  which  is 
invading  them  all,  is  truly  a  sight  for  the  most  malig- 
nant beings  in  the  creation  to  exult  over.  It  is  a  spec- 
tacle of  still  darker  character  than  that  which  would 
have  been  presented  by  opposed  armed  parties  or  le- 
gions gallantly  maintaining  battle  on  the  yet  uncovered 
spaces  of  ground  while  the  universal  flood  was  rising. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  77 

Alas  !  we  must  repeat,  for  the  stupefied  intelligence 
of  those  minds  which  can  regard  as  idle  extravagance 
this  language  which  would  arouse  their  attention  to 
what  is  as  certainly  a  reality  as  their  own  existence, 
and  will  infallibly  make  the  most  fatal  proof  of  its 
power  on  the  spirits  the  least  aware  that  the  destroy- 
er is  at  hand.     What  a  renovation  of  perceptive  fac- 
ulty is  necessary  to  that  being  who  would  ask,  either 
in  levity  or  ignorant  surprise,  What  and  where  is  that 
foe  so  mahgnant  and  powerful?   while  there  is  ex- 
posed in  full  view  the  mighty  mass,  and  force,  and 
operation  of  all  that  depraves  and  ruins  the  souls  of 
men.     The  insensibility  to  this  fact  as  existing,  and  as 
being  incomparably  the  most  awful  phenomenon  on 
earth,  would  itself  betray,  in  such  a  negation  of  moral 
intuition,  the  intervention  of  the  very  enemy  described. 
Let  a  thoughtful  man  survey  the  world  of  mankind, 
and  see  what  there  is  universally  among  them  to  ex- 
cite the  sad  exclamation,  "  Wo  to  the  inhabitants  of 
the  earth  !"     Let  him  deeply  consider  what  it  is  that 
he  is  beholding,  while  he  observes  this  power  of  evil 
assaihng,    and    committing   grievous    mischief   upon, 
every  human   being,   his   experience   testifying  that 
himself  is  not  exempted.     Let  him  reflect  that  what 
he  sees  is  an  operation  reducing  unnumbered  myriads 
of  rational  and  immortal  creatm^es  to  a  state  so  much 
worse  than  that  which  would  be  the  right  and  happy 
condition  of  their  being,  that  there  is  nothing  in  all 
merely  ten^estrial  things  adequate  to  furnish,  by  a  con- 


78  THE    GLORY    OF   THE    AGE  ; 

trast  Detween  extremes,  a  measure  for  the  difference. 
He  is  to  form  his  judgment  of  the  gloomy  fact  under 
his  \'iew  on  an  estimate  of  the  injury  done  to  each 
one,  and  of  the  number  so  injured,  including  in  the 
account  the  generations  of  all  past  time.  And  let  him 
try  whether  an  earnest  and  protracted  attention  to  the 
dire  exhibition  will  detect  a  fallacy  in  its  dreadful  as- 
pect, so  that  his  last  sober  judgment  shall  be  like  the 
relief  of  recovering,  by  the  aid  of  reason,  from  a  su- 
perstitious terror.  No ;  he  will  find,  uniforaily,  that 
the  evil  reveals  itself  to  him  in  still  more  substantial 
and  deadly  character,  the  longer  his  mind  fixes  with 
close  and  solemn  inspection  on  any  of  its  innumerable 
forms.  The  impression  thus  reinforced  by  stronger 
demonstration  might  become  too  aggravated  to  be 
borne,  if  there  were  to  be  suddenly  imparted  to  him 
a  great  addition  of  religious  light  and  sensibility 
through  which  he  should  receive,  while  contemplating 
this  vision  of  evil,  a  brighter  manifestation  of  the  holi- 
ness of  God  and  the  perfection  of  His  law.  And  even 
such  a  view  as  would  overpower  the  firmest  mind 
might  still  be  but  a  faint  apprehension  compared  with 
the  perception  of  some  superior  pure  intelligence  look- 
ing on  this  world  ;  and  how  much  more  so  in  com- 
parison with  the  thouglit  and  feeling  with  which  the 
Redeemer  beheld  the  error  and  depravity  of  our  race. 
No  language  nor  images  for  communicating  informa- 
tion in  any  world  can  ever  represent  His  estimate  of 
the  scene.     But  that  was  the  only  adequate  appre- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  79 

hension  of  it.  In  whatever  degree,  therefore,  its  por- 
tentous qiiahty  is  manifested  to  the  view  of  a  rehgious 
observer,  he  will  always  be  certain  that  there  is  in  it 
a  depth  of  evil  still  beyond  the  capacit}^  of  his 
thought ;  while  in  that  which  he  does  apprehend,  he 
perceives  a  magnitude  and  atrocity  which  can  be  but 
feebly  expressed  by  boiTowing  terms  from  circum- 
stances the  most  odious  and  dreadful  in  material 
existence,  and  saying,  that  the  multitude  of  human 
souls  are  invaded,  robbed,  polluted,  chained,  torment- 
ed, or  murdered. 

Sometimes  we  contemplate,  perhaps,  the  mighty 
progress  of  destruction,  as  carried  over  a  large  tract  of 
the  earth  by  some  of  the  memorable  instruments  of  the 
divine  wrath,  such  as  Attila,  Zingis  Khan,  or  Timour. 
We  behold  a  wide-spreading  terror  preceding,  to  be 
soon  followed  by  the  realization  of  ever}^  alarming 
presage,  in  resistless  ravage  and  extermination.  Num- 
berless crowds  come  tumultuously  to  our  view,  in  all 
the  varieties  of  dismay,  and  vain  effort,  and  suffering, 
and  death  ;  a  world  of  ghastly  countenances,  desperate 
struggles,  lamentable  cries,  streaming  blood,  and  ex- 
piring agonies,  with  the  corresponding  circumstances 
of  fury  and  triumph,  and  the  appropriate  scenery  of 
habitations  burning  and  the  land  made  a  desert.  And 
while  one  general  character  of  horror  is  spread  over 
the  immensity  of  the  scene,  the  imagined  forms  and 
aspects  of  individual  victims,  frequently  marked  forth 
from  the  confused  aggregate,  and  presented  to  the 


80  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

mind  in  momentary  glimpses,  as  vivid  points  of  im- 
pression, give  an  effect  of  reality  to  the  visionary 
spectacle  of  misery  and  destruction. 

When  a  man  of  ardent  imagination  has  dwelt  upon 
such  a  scene  till  it  almost  glows  into  actual  existence 
in  his  view,  let  him  be  assured  it  is  the  lano^uagre  of 
truth  and  soberness  that  affirms  this  spectacle  to  form 
but  a  faint  and  inadequate  image  for  representing 
that  otlier  invasion  which  is  made  upon  the  spirits  of 
all  mankind,  that  invasion  of  Avliich,  indeed,  all  these 
horrors  are  themselves  but  a  few  of  the  exterior  cir- 
cumstances and  results.  And  yet  creatures  assailed 
and  in  danger  of  destruction  by  this  more  awful  ca- 
lamity, surveying  in  fancy,  and  shuddering  while  they 
survey,  these  furies  and  mi^ries  of  remote  times  or 
regions,  shall  bless  their  good  fortune  that  they  are 
not  exposed  to  any  persecution  of  evil  a  thousandth 
part  so  formidable ! 

When  following  in  thought  those  perpetrators  of 
devastation  and  carnage  we  have  the  consolation  of 
foreseeing  its  end.  The  Caesars  and  Attilas  were  as 
mortal  as  the  millions  who  expired  to  give  them  fame. 
Of  Tiraour,  the  lano^uajre  of  the  historian,  kindhns: 
into  poetry,  relates  that  "  he  pitched  his  last  camp  at 
Otrar,  where  he  was  expected  by  the  Angel  of 
Death."'*  But  the  power  that  wages  war  imme- 
diately on  the  souls  of  men,  the  power  of  depravity 
and  delusion  combined,  has  continued  to  hve  or  de- 

*    Gibbon. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  81 

stroy  while  all  these  renowned  exterminators  have 
yielded  to  the  decree  that  sent  them  after  their  vic- 
tims. It  is  perpetually  imigorated  by  the  very  de- 
struction which  it  works ;  as  if  it  fed  upon  the  slain  to 
strengthen  itself  for  new  slaughter,  and  absorbed  into 
its  own  every  life  which  it  takes  away.  For  it  is  in 
the  nature  of  moral  evil,  as  acting  on  human  beings, 
to  create  to  itself  new  facilities,  means,  and  force  for 
prolonging  that  action.  From  the  effects  there  is 
continually  reflected  back  an  augmentation  of  power 
to  the  cause ;  a  circumstance  explained  by  the  fatal 
aptitude  of  the  subject  operated  upon  to  give  its  own 
strength  to  aid  the  pernicious  agency.  The  injured 
subject — the  corrupted  nature — still  less  and  less,  at 
each  return  of  the  injurer,  thinks  of  suspecting  or  re- 
sisting; still  more  and  more  effectually  contributes 
that  the  malignity  may  not  be  frustrated.  So  that 
the  power  of  sin  acquires  over  those  who  are  surren- 
dered to  it  a  more  decided  predominance  in  each  stage 
of  their  progress,  and  makes  confirmed  assurance  of 
what  they  will  be  in  the  next,  unless  prevented  by 
somethino-  foreio-n  to  their  own  moral  nature.  And 
since  the  majority  of  human  beings  have  always  been 
under  this  power,  what  a  security  it  has  possessed  for 
prolonging  its  empire  of  destruction !  What  a  secu- 
rity, in  the  principle  by  which,  in  every  period,  the 
greater  number  of  all  mankind  were,  as  individuals, 
incessantly  growing  worse  !  And  to  what  a .  dread- 
ful perfection  of  evil  might  such  a  race  attain  but  for 
4* 


82  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

death,  that  cuts  the  terra  of  individuals  so  short,  and 
but  for  the  Spirit  of  God,  that  converts  some,  and 
puts  a  degree  of  restraint  on  the  rest. 

And  now,  if  there  is  really  thus  in  action,  against 
the  souls  of  our  race,  such  an  eneray  as  all  these  epi- 
thets and  images  can  but  faintly  represent,  can  a  pro- 
fessed servant  of  God  look  round  and  felicitate  him- 
self on  having  an  extremely  easy  test  of  his  fidelity. 
Where  does  he  find  his  privileged  ground  of  immunity 
and  indulgence,  while  this  mighty  force  of  evil  drives 
and  sweeps  and  rages  against  God  and  truth,  against 
goodness  and  happiness,  his  own  spirit  and  all  men's 
spirits,  as  really  as  ever  he  that  was  named  the 
scourge  of  God  ravaged  the  countries  of  Asia  and 
Em'ope  ?  In  seeking  such  exemption  he  must  aban- 
don all  the  objects  and  interests  against  which  this 
hostility  is  directed ;  must  therefore  compromise  and, 
in  effect,  co-operate  with  the  enemy.  Let  him  con- 
sider what  scheme  it  is  possible  to  conceive  of  true 
service  to  the  King  of  Heaven  in  this  bad  world, 
which  should  not  commit  him  in  conflict  at  every 
point  of  its  execution.  Against  every  good  he  can 
think  of  he  will  find  an  appropriate  antagonist  evil 
already  in  full  action,  an  action  that  will  not  remit 
and  sink  into  quiet  when  he  approaches  to  effect  the 
intended  good.  Nay,  indeed,  in  what  way  is  it  that 
the  servant  of  God  the  most  readily  apprehends  the 
nature  of  his  vocation  but  in  that  of  seeing  what  it 
is  against.     And  when  he  puts  the  matter  to  experi- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  83 

mental  proof,  does  he  ever  find  that  those  apprehended 
adversaries  are  nothinor  but  menacing:  shadows  ?  Let 
him  that  has  made  the  most  determined,  protracted, 
and  extensive  trial,  tell  whether  it  is  idle  common- 
place and  extravagance  when  we  say  that  all  Christian 
exhortation  is  in  truth  a  summons  to  war. 

There  are  many  modes  of  the  action  of  this  grand 
enemy — moral  evil — which  press  so  immediately  on  a 
man's  own  personal  concern,  that  an  habitual  conflict 
with  them  is  an  essential  condition  of  the  Cliristian 
character :  a  practical  question  of  hostility  or  acquies- 
cence is  implicated  with  the  ordinary  course  of  his 
self-government.  There  are  other  forms,  of  great 
magnitude  and  hatefulness,  existing  in  the  world, 
which  do  not  so  directly  force  themselves  into  the 
question  of  his  being  a  Christian  or  not.  In  judgment 
and  feeling  he  must  be,  of  course,  their  implacable 
enemy.  But  since  they  throw  no  temptation  in  his 
way,  have  the  sphere  of  their  malignant  operation  at 
a  great  distance,  leave  a  very  wide  space  clear  for 
Christian  exercise,  and  may  seem,  also,  by  their  vast- 
ness  and  consolidated  establishment,  to  be  placed  the 
very  last  of  all  things  that  individuals  can  account 
themselves  competent  to  attack — to  be  as  enormous 
mountains  limiting  their  field — it  may  be  acknowl- 
edged a  matter  of  somewhat  less  definable  obligation 
in  what  degree  he  shall  actively  expend  his  animosity 
upon  them.     The  exhortation  to  apply  a  share  of  his 


84  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

eflforts  111  that  direction  may  be  considered  as  partly 
an  appeal  to  those  higher  sentiments  of  the  religious 
spirit  which  aspire  to  the  full  magnanimity  and  zeal 
of  the  Christian  character.  It  is  an  admonition  to  the 
professed  adherents  of  Him  who  came  on  earth  with 
a  design  extending  in  hostility,  without  limit  or  ex- 
ception, to  every  thing  adverse  to  goodness  and  per- 
nicious to  the  human  soul,  that  if  all  the  moral  evil  in 
the  world  is  not  acting  immediately  against  tlicm,  it  is 
against  Him  ;  and  that  it  is  most  reasonable  tliat  one 
of  the  laws  of  their  devotion  to  Him  should  be,  to 
identify  themselves  with  Him  in  the  practical  warfare 
to  the  widest  scope  which  is  really  open  to  their  enter- 
prise. It  is  an  incitement  to  their  ambition,  not  to 
leave  it  to  be  ever  said  again,  with  respect  to  any  part 
of  His  operations  against  evil  among  men,  that  He 
trod  the  wine- press  alone,  and  that  of  the  people  there 
was  none  with  Him. 

When  animated  to  this  high  and  adventurous  spirit, 
a  good  man  may  wonder  that  the  heathenism  prevail- 
ing over  large  tracts  of  the  world  should  so  little  have 
been,  in  this  country,  or  other  Protestant  nations,  till  a 
comparatively  recent  time,  accounted  as  comprehended 
within  the  sphere  of  required    Christian  exertion.* 

*  The  indiflfcrcnce  of  Protestants  was  not  for  want  of  examples,  such 
as  they  were,  of  activity  in  this  department.  It  was  very  well  known 
that  there  had  been  various  missionary  enterprises  under  the  appoint 
ment  of  the  Romish  Church.  And  certain  individuals  employed  in 
tliose  missions  were  held  worthy  of  perpetual  remembrance  for  their 
invincible  perseverance,  and  lor  a  share,  it  was  fair  to  behove,  of  a  truly 
Christian  principle  in  the  motives  which  actuated  them.     But  when 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  85 

One  most  amiable  fraternity,  indeed,  wliose  gentleness 
at  home  involves  a  principle  by  which  it  glows  into 
energy  and  heroism  in  proportion  to  the  remoteness 
of  the  distance,  and  the  barbarousness  and  ruggedness 
of  the  field  of  action,  to  which  it  is  vokmtarily  exiled, 
have  made  missions  to  the  heathens  an  essential  part 
of  their  institution.  But,  in  general,  the  friends  of  re- 
ligion seem  to  have  regarded  those  great  maladies  of 
the  moral  world,  the  delusions  and  abominations  of 
paganism,  with  a  sort  of  submissive  awe,  as  if,  almost, 
they  had  established  a  prescriptive  right  to  the  place 
they  have  held  so  long,  or  as  if  they  w^ere  pail  of  an 
unchano-eable,  uncontrollable  order  of  nature,  like  the 
noxious  climates  of  certain  portions  of  the  globe,  and 
the  Uableness  in  others  to  the  terrors  of  earthquake. 
Or,  at  least,  when  these  religious  men  have  looked  on 
these  mighty  forms  of  darkness  and  iniquity,  as  des- 
tmed  to  vanish  at  some  time  from  the  scenes  of  which 
they  have  been  so  long  the  curse,  and  have  prayed  for 
that  time  to  be  hastened  on,  they  have  found  them- 
selves anticipating  and  invoking,  Avith  undefined  con- 
ception, some  entirely  unwonted  and  even  properly 

these  undertakings  were  viewed  in  their  general  character,  it  was  so  no- 
torious that  they  were,  as  to  the  prevaiUng  motive,  projects  of  hierarch- 
ical ambition,  and  that,  in  their  mode  of  prosecution,  they  accommo- 
dated, with  the  corruptest  policy,  to  the  paganism  they  professed  to 
convert,  and  introduced  a  gi-eat  deal  of  what  was  no  better  than  pagan- 
ism of  their  own,  that  Protestants  could  hardly  regard  them  as  Christian 
projects,  and  therefore  felt  no  stimulus  at  the  view  of  their  activity, 
and  derived  nothing  to  excite  hope  from  the  boasts,  or  the  facts,  of  their 
success. 


86  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

miraculous  mode  of  divine  interposition,  and  have  felt 
as  if  it  Avould  be  for  men  to  stand  off  and  see  what 
God  can  do,  in  tliis  very  feeling  perhaps  admitting 
on  their  minds,  in  a  degree,  the  imposition  through 
•which  a  defect  of  faith  and  zeal  may  be  mistaken  for 
humility  and  devotion. 

Within  a  later  period,  however  (within  that, 
chiefly,  which  has  shown,  on  so  vast  a  scale,  the 
availableness  of  human  agency  for  overturning  thmgs 
of  ancient,  and  wide,  and  commanding  establishment 
in  the  world),  many  good  men  have  begun  to  regard 
with  much  less  prostration  of  feeling  those  gigantic 
"  dominations"  which  have  for  so  many  ages  held  so 
many  nations  in  the  debasement  of  superstition.  It 
came  to  be  questioned  why  a  servant  of  Christ  should 
shrink  from  looking  any  of  the  powers  of  darkness  in 
the  face,  from  defying  them  in  his  Master's  name,  or 
from  making  the  expeiiment  of  an  application  of 
Heaven's  own  fire  to  their  abhorred  establishments  of 
deceit  and  wickedness,  in  which  the  souls  of  men  are 
destroyed.  In  proportion  as  the  imaginary  defense 
around  these  tyrannies  over  the  mind  was  falling,  in 
proportion  as  the  reputed  guardianship  of  fate  or  in- 
feiTial  power  which  had  seemed  to  render  them  invio- 
lable was  breaking  up,  the  idea  of  such  an  experiment 
on  them  assumed  a  less  visionary  appearance.  It  took 
a  distinct  character  of  evident  practicability ;  and 
then  it  grew  to  a  conviction  of  duty  in  some  of  those 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  87 

to  whom  the  cause  of  Heaven  was  the  object  of  high- 
est concern  on  earth. 

This  impression  was  strongly  felt  by  the  first 
movers  of  the  project  of  that  mission  to  India,  which  we 
can  not  hesitate  to  represent  as  one  of  the  most  ra- 
tional and  efficient  enterprises  of  the  enlarging  Christian 
ambition  to  make  war  on  the  greatest  and  most  invet- 
erate evils  of  the  moral  world.  When  awaked,  as  it 
were,  to  behold  an  ampler  view  of  the  world  as  a 
field  of  activity  for  the  zealots  for  the  best  cause,  they 
were  struck  with  surprise  at  seeing  so  few  adventur- 
ing into  the  distance  against  the  most  ancient  and 
vast  dominion  of  paganism ;  and  they  thought  it  high 
time  that  an  end  should  be  put  to  the  quietude  of 
sentiment,  the  antichristian  tolerance,  toward  what 
Avas  so  proudly  and  with  impunity  standing  in  defi- 
ance of  that  cause. 

The  odious  quality  and  the  strength  of  this  possess- 
or of  so  wide  a  realm  and  so  many  slaves  were  evi- 
dent enough  under  a  very  imperfect  exposure,  to 
place  the  meditated  experiment  of  hostility  greatly 
out  of  the  common  calculations  of  Christian  daring. 
It  could  not  but  appear  so  far  beyond  those  ordinary 
presumptions  as  to  provoke  the  contempt  of  those 
who  have  no  notion  of  the  interference  of  the  divine 
power  in  aid  of  such  a  project ;  so  far  beyond  them, 
indeed,  as  to  insure  an  entire  defeat  if  it  were  under- 
taken in  dependence  on  any  other  than  that  superior 
strength.     Yet  the  information  possessed  at  that  time. 


88  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

by  even  the  cultivated  part  of  the  nation,  had  not 
sufficed  to  give  any  thing  approaching  to  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  superstition  and  depravity  of  the  people 
of  Hindoostan.  It  has  been  chiefly  during  the  period 
since  this  mission  was  commenced,  and  in  a  consider- 
able degree  in  consequence  of  the  discussions  and  the 
exposition  of  evidence  occasioned  by  animosity  against 
it,  that  a  rapidly  increasing  knowledge  has  brought  the 
general  opinion  to  that  judgment  of  the  character  and 
condition  of  the  Hindoos,  which  the  translations  made 
from  their  sacred  books  by  the  missionaries  and  other 
Eastern  scholars,  and  the  reports  of  travelers  reduced 
at  last  to  the  necessity  of  being  honest,  are  fast  con- 
tributing to  place  beyond  all  controversy.  If  there 
was  in  so  old  and  well  examined  a  thing  as  human 
nature  no  undetected  perversity  for  these  disclosures 
to  bring  to  light  as  a  new  principle  of  evA,  they  have,- 
however,  shown  some  of  its  known  evil  principles 
inhering  and  operating  in  it  with  such  an  absoluteness 
of  possessive  power,  and  displaying  this  despotism  in 
such  wantonly  versatile,  extravagant,  and  monstrous 
effects,  as  to  surpass  all  our  previous  imaginations  and 
measures  of  possibility.  The  enlarged  information 
has  placed  before  us,  as  constituting  the  actual  state 
of  a  prodigious  mass  of  human  existence,  an  exhibition 
of  such  things  as  it  would  have  seemed  to  require  a 
superhuman  genius  for  inventing  shapes  of  degrada- 
tion and  absurdity  to  have  figured  as  dreams  of  fancy. 
There  is  much  in  the  Hindoo  svstem  that  is  strik- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  89 

ingly  peculiar ;  but  as  it  is  the  substantial  greatness 
of  the  evil,  rather  than  its  specific  discrimination,  that 
requires  to  be  presented  to  the  view  of  Christian  zeal, 
much  of  the  stress  of  our  brief  observations  will  be  laid 
on  properties  which  are  common  to  this  with  the 
other  principal  modes  of  paganism.  The  object  is 
rather  to  display  the  system  in  its  strength  of  perni- 
cious operation,  than  to  attempt  any  explanatory 
statement  of  its  precise  materials  or  construction. 
There  needs  no  great  length  of  description,  since  the 
communications  of  missionaries,  and  various  other 
works  pubhshed  within  the  last  few  years,  have  made 
all  who  take  any  interest  in  the  subject  familiarly  ac- 
quainted with  the  prominent  features  of  the  heathen- 
ism of  central  Asia.  As  for  the  possible  attainment 
of  any  thing  like  a  complete  knowledge,  it  may  defy  all 
human  faculty  ;  which  faculty  besides,  if  it  might  search 
the  universe  for  choice  of  subjects,  could  find  nothing 
less  worth  its  efforts  for  knowledge.  The  system,  if  so 
it  is  to  be  called,  appears,  to  a  cursory  inquirer  at  least, 
an  utter  chaos,  without  top,  or  bottom,  or  center,  or  any 
dimension  or  proportion,  belonging  either  to  matter  or 
mind,  and  consisting  of  materials  which  certainly 
deserve  no  better  order.  It  gives  one  the  idea  of 
immensity  filled  with  what  is  not  of  the  value  of  an 
atom.  It  is  the  most  remarkable  exemplification  of 
the  possibility  of  making  the  grandest  ideas  con- 
temptible by  conjunction ;  for  that  of  infinity  is  here 
combmed  Avith  the  very  abstract  of  worthlessness. 


90  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

But,  deserving  of  all  contempt  as  it  is,  regarded 
merely  as  a  farrago  of  notions  and  fantasies,  it  be- 
comes a  thing  for  detestation  and  earnest  hostility 
when  \iewed  in  its  practical  light,  as  the  governing 
scheme  of  principles  and  rites  to  a  large  portion  of 
our  race.  Consider  that  there  is  thus  acting  upon 
them,  as  religion,  a  system  which  is  in  nearly  all  its 
properties  that  which  the  true  religion  is  not,  and  in 
many  of  them  the  exact  reverse.  Look  at  your  reh- 
gion,  presented  in  its  bright  attributes  before  you,  re- 
flecting those  of  its  Author,  and  then  realize  to  your 
minds,  as  far  as  you  can,  the  condition  of  so  many 
millions  of  human  spirits  receiving  without  intermis- 
sion, from  infancy  to  the  hour  of  death,  the  full  influ- 
ence of  the  direct  opposites  to  these  divine  principles 
— a  contrast  of  condition  but  faintly  typified  by  that 
between  the  Israelites  and  the  Egyptians  in  behold- 
ing, on  the  different  sides,  the  pillar  in  its  appearance 
over  the  Red  Sea.  Consider  in  comparison  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  systems  under  which  we  and  they 
are  passing  forward  to  another  world.  Wliile  ours 
has,  as  its  solar  light  and  glory,  the  doctrine  of  One 
Being  in  whom  all  perfections  are  united  and  infinite, 
theirs  scatters  that  which  is  the  most  precious  and  vi- 
tal sentiment  of  the  human  soul  and  of  any  created 
intellijxence,  that  is,  the  affection  which  rei>-ards  Deitv, 
to  an  indefinite  multitude  and  diversity  of  adored 
objects ;  the  one  system  carrying  the  spirit  down- 
ward to  utter  debasement  through  that  very  element 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  91 

of  feeling  in  which  it  should  be  exalted,  while  the  oth- 
er, when  in  full  influence,  bears  it  upward  through  all 
thins^s,  that  combine  to  desjrade  it.*  The  relation  sub- 
sisting  between  man  and  the  divinity,  as  unfolded  to 
view  in  the  true  religion,  is  of  a  simple  and  solemn 
character,  whereas  the  Brahminical  theory  exhibits  this 
relation  in  an  infinitely  confounded,  fantastic,  vexa- 
tious, and  ludicrous  complexity.  While  in  the  Chris- 
tian system  the  future  state  of  man  is  declared  with 
the  same  dignified  simplicity,  the  opposed  paganism, 
between  some  inane  dream  of  an  aspiring  mysticism 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  paltriest  conceits  of  a  reptile 
invention  on  the  other,  presents,  we  might  say  sports, 
this  sublime  doctrine  and  fact  in  the  shapes  of  whim- 
sey  and  riddle.  Ours  is  an  economy  according  to 
which  religion,  considered  as  in  its  human  subjects, 
consists  in  a  state  of  mind  instead  of  exterior  formali- 
ties ;  the  institutes  of  the  Hindoos  make  it  cliiefly 
consist  in  a  miraculously  multiplied  and  ramified  set 
of  ritual  fooleries.  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  notice 
in  the  comparison  that  while  the  one  enjoins  and  pro- 
motes a  perfect  morality,  the  other  essentially  favors, 
and  even  formally  sanctions,  the  worst  vices.     It  may 

*  A  faded  trace  of  primeval  truth  remains  in  their  theology,  in  a  cer- 
tain inane  notion  of  a  Supreme  Spirit,  distinguished  from  the  infinity 
of  personifications  on  which  the  religious  sentiment  is  wasted,  and  from 
those  few  transcendent  demon  figures  which  proudly  stand  out  from  the 
insignificance  of  the  swarm.  But  it  is  unnecessary  to  say,  that  this  no- 
tion, a  thin  remote  abstraction,  as  a  mere  nebula  in  the  Hindoo  heaven, 
is  quite  inefficient  for  shedding  one  salutary  ray  on  the  spirits  infatu- 
ated with  all  that  is  trivial  and  gross  in  superstition. 


92 


suffice  to  add,  that  while  the  true  religion  knows  noth- 
ing of  any  precedence  in  the  divine  estimate  and  re- 
gard of  one  class  of  human  creatures  before  another, 
in  virtue  of  nativity  or  any  mere  natural  distinction,  the 
superstition  we  are  describing  has  rested  very  much 
of  its  power  upon  a  classification,  according  to  which 
one  considerable  proportion  of  the  people  are,  by  the 
very  circumstance  of  their  birth,  morally  distinguished 
as  holy  and  venerable,  and  another  more  numerous 
proportion,  as  base  and  contemptible,  sprung  from  the 
feet  of  the  creating  god,  that  they  might  be  slaves  to 
the  tribe  which  had  the  luck  and  honor  to  spring 
from  his  head. 

Such  is  this  aggregate  of  perversions  of  all  thought, 
and  feeling,  and  practice.  And  yet  the  system,  being 
religion,  acts  on  its  subjects  with  that  kind  of  power 
which  is  appropriate  and  peculiar  to  religion.  The 
sense  which  man,  by  the  very  constitution  of  his  na- 
ture, has  of  the  existence  of  some  superhuman  pow- 
er, is  one  of  the  strongest  principles  of  that  nature ; 
whatever,  therefore,  takes  effectual  hold  of  this  sense 
will  go  far  toward  acquiring  the  regency  of  his  moral 
being.  This  conjunction  of  so  many  delusions  does 
take  possession  of  this  sense  in  the  minds  of  the  Hin- 
doos with  a  mightier  force  than  probably  we  see  in 
any  other  exhibition  of  the  occupancy  of  religion,  on 
a  wide  scale,  in  the  world.  But  to  the  power  which 
the  superstition  has  in  thus  taking  hold  of  the  relig- 
ious sense  is  to  be  added  that  which  it  acquires  by 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  93 

another  and  a  dreadful  adaptation ;  for  it  takes  hold 
also,  as  with  more  numerous  hands  than  those  given 
to  some  of  the  deities,  of  all  the  corrupt  principles 
of  the  heart.  What  an  awful  consideration,  that 
among  a  race  of  rational  creatures  a  religion  should 
be  mighty  almost  to  omnipotence  by  means,  in  a 
great  measure,  of  its  favorableness  to  evil !  What  a 
melancholy  display  of  man,  that  the  two  contrasted 
visitants  to  the  world,  the  one  from  heaven,  the  other 
deserving  by  its  qualities  to  have  its  origin  referred, 
to  hell — that  these  two  coming  to  make  trial  of  their 
respective  adaptations  and  affinities  upon  human 
spirits,  the  infernal  one  should  find  free  admission, 
through  congeniality,  to  the  possession  of  the  whole 
souls  of  immense  multitudes,  while  the  one  from  heav- 
en should  but  obtain  in  individuals,  here  and  there, 
a  possession  which  is  partial  at  the  best,  and  to  be 
maintained  by  a  conflict,  to  the  end  of  life,  against 
implacably  repugnant  principles  in  the  mind.  Well 
may  a  Christian  be  affected  with  the  most  humiliating 
emotion,  both  for  his  race  and  himself,  while  he  re- 
flects, I  have  a  nature  which  might  have  yielded  itself 
entire  to  a  false  religion,  but  so  reluctantly  and  par- 
tially surrenders  itself  to  the  true  one,  as  to  retain  me 
in  the  condition  of  having  it  for  the  chief  concern  of 
my  life  and  prayers  that  the  still  opposing  disposi- 
tions may  be  subdued. 

We  may  assume  it  as  a  fact,  too  obvious   to  need 
illustration  in  particulars,  that  this  superstition,  while 


94  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

it  commands  the  faith  of  its  subjects,  completes  its 
power  over  them  by  its  accordance  to  tlieir  pride, 
malevolence,  sensuality,  and  deceitfulness ;  to  that 
natural  concomitant  of  pride,  the  baseness  which  is 
ready  to  prostrate  itself  in  homage  to  any  thing  that 
shall  put  itself  in  place  of  God  ;  and  to  that  interest 
which  criminals  feel  to  transfer  their  own  accountable- 
ness  upon  the  powers  above  them.  But  then  think 
what  a  condition  for  human  creatures !  that  believe 
in  a  religion  which  invigorates,  by  coincidence  and 
sanction,  those  principles  in  their  nature  which  the 
true  religion  is  intended  to  destroy  ;  and  in  return, 
those  principles  thus  strengthened  contribute  to  con- 
firm their  faith  in  the  religion.  The  mischief  inflicted 
becomes  the  most  effectual  persuasion  to  confidence 
in  the  inflicter. 

Observe,  again,  the  power  possessed  by  this  stu- 
pendous delusion  in  having  direct  hold  on  the  senses, 
in  so  many  ways,  even  exclusively  of  the  grosser 
means  (the  grossest  possible,  as  you  are  apprised), 
of  which  it  avails  itself  to  please  them.  It  has  infused 
itself,  as  it  were,  into  numberless  visible  objects, 
whence  it  emanates  in  a  continual  influence  on  the 
mind  through  the  senses,  having  made  these  objects 
expressive  and  representative  of  religious  ideas.  All 
the  vain  notions  of  the  superstition  thus  stand  em- 
bodied before  its  devotees  in  material  phenomena, 
which  are  informed  with  a  significance  that  seems  to 
look  at  them  and  speak  to  them.     Presented  to  them 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  95 

in  these  sensible  types,  those  dehisive  ideas  occupy 
their  faculties  sooner,  almost,  than  they  can  think, 
more  constantly  than  they  think,  and  in  a  mode  of 
possession  stronger  than  mere  thought.  Indeed,  it  is 
a  mode  of  possession  which  (after  faith  has  grown 
into  the  habit  of  the  mind)  may  be  effectual  on  the 
feelings  though  thought  be  wanting ;  for  we  may  pre- 
sume that  in  India,  as  in  other  places,  when  external 
forms  and  shows  have  been  admitted  as  symbols  of 
subjects  of  belief,  they  may  preserve  in  the  people 
much  of  the  moral  habitude  appropriate  to  tliat  belief, 
even  at  times  Avhen  there  is  no  strictly  intellectual  ap- 
prehension. The  Hindoo  is  under  the  influence  of  this 
enchantment  upon  his  senses  almost  wherever  the 
Christian  remonstrance  ao-ainst  the  doo-mas  and  rites 
of  his  superstition  can  approach  him,  seeking  acce-s  to 
his  reason  and  conscience.  The  man  thus  attempting 
may  have  read  idle  fictions  of  magical  spells,  which 
obstruct  the  passing  of  some  line,  or  preclude  entrance 
at  a  gate ;  but  here  he  may  perceive  a  real  interven- 
ing magic  between  the  truth  he  brings  and  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  faculties  into  Avhich  he  wishes  to 
introduce  it.  In  his  missionary  progress  among  the 
people,  perhaps  he  shall  address  them  where  there  is 
in  sight  some  votive  object,  some  consecrated  relic,  or 
the  tomb  of  some  revered  impostor;  things  which 
being  connected,  in  their  apprehension,  as  closely  with 
rehgion  as  their  garments  are  with  their  persons,  will 
impress  the  assuranc  ethat  the  rehgion  of  which  the 


96  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

emblems  are  present,  is  present  itself ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  it  is  a  reality,  of  which  every  thing  adorable  or 
fearful  is  at  that  instant  impending  in  menacing  author- 
ity over  them.  A  thing  inconsiderable  in  itself,  firmly 
associated  with  an  invisible  greater  thing  as  its  sign, 
may  have  the  effect  not  only  of  reminding  of  that 
greater,  but  of  aggravating  the  sense  of  both  its  reality 
and  importance. 

His  next  address  may  be  uttered  in  the  vicinity  of 
a  temple  which,  if  in  ruins,  seems  to  tell  but  so  much 
the  more  impressively,  by  that  image  and  sign  of  anti- 
quity, at  what  a  remote  and  solemn  distance  of  time 
that  2oas  the  religion  which  they  feel  to  be  the  religion 
still ;  if  undilapidated  and  continuing  in  its  sacred  use, 
overawes  their  minds  with  the  mysterious  solemnities 
of  its  unviolated  sanctuary ;  while  the  sculptured 
shapes  and  actions  of  divinities,  overspreading  the  ex- 
terior of  the  structure,  have  nothing  in  their  impotent 
and  monstrous  device  and  clumsy  execution  to  abate 
the  reverence  of  Hindoo  devotion  toward  the  objects 
expressed  in  this  visible  language.  The  missionary,  if 
an  acute  observer,  might  perceive  how  rays  of  mahg- 
nant  influence  strike  from  such  objects  upon  the  facul- 
ties of  his  auditors,  to  be  as  it  were  reflected  in  their 
looks  of  disbelief  and  disdain  upon  the  preacher  of  the 
new  doctrine.  What  a  strength  of  guardianship  is 
thus  arrayed  in  the  very  senses  of  the  pagan  for  the 
fables,  lying  doctiines,  and  unmoral  principles  estab- 
lished in  his  faith ! 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  97 

Or  we  may  suppose  the  protester  in  the  name  of 
the  true  God  to  be  led  to  the  scene  of  one  of  the 
grand  periodical  celebrations  of  the  extraordinary  rites 
of  idolatry.  There,  as  at  the  temple  of  Juggernaut, 
contemplating  the  effect  of  an  intense  fanaticism,  grow- 
ing through  an  almost  infinite  crowd,  he  may  perceive 
that  each  individual  mind  is  the  more  fitted,  by  being 
heated  in  this  infernal  furnace,  to  harden  in  a  more 
decided  form  and  stamp  of  idolatry  as  it  cools. 

The  very  riches  of  nature,  the  conformations  and 
productions  of  the  elements,  co-operate  in  this  mighty 
tyranny  over  the  mind  by  occupancy  of  the  senses. 
Divinity,  while  degraded  in  human  conception  of  it, 
in  being  diffused  through  these  objects,  comes,  at  the 
same  time,  with  a  more  immediate  impression  of  pres- 
ence, Avhen  flowers,  trees,  animals,  rivers,  present 
themselves,  not  as  effects  and  illustrations,  but  often 
as  substantial  participants,  or  at  least  sacred  vehicles, 
of  that  sublimest  existence,  and  the  whole  surround- 
ing physical  world  is  one  vast  mythology,  an  omni- 
present fallacy.  In  praying  that  the  region  may  be 
cleared  of  idol  gods,  the  missionary  might  feel  the 
question  suggested  whether  he  is  not  repeating  Elijah's 
prayer  for  the  withholding  of  rain,  which  would  cer- 
tainly do  much  toward  vacating  the  pantheon,  by  the 
destruction  of  the  flowers,  trees,  animals,  and  streams. 

This  great  enemy,  against  which  we  are  wishing  to 
excite  Christian  zeal,  is  "  mighty"  in  the  strength  of 
venerable  antiquity.  Antiquity  is,  all  over  the  world, 
5 


yb  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

the  favorite  resource  of  that  which  is  without  rational 
evidence ;  especially  so,  therefore,  of  superstition ;  and 
the  Brahminical  superstition  rises  imperially  above  all 
others  in  assumption  of  dignity  from  the  past,  which 
it  arrogates  as  all  its  own,  but  emphatically  that  which 
appears  the  most  solemn  by  remoteness.  Other  dom- 
inations over  human  opinion  are  under  the  necessity 
of  acknowledging  an  origin;  at  a  particular  period, 
and  in  comparative  insignificance,  and  have  had  to 
attain  their  due  honors  by  a  slowly  enlarging  progress 
downward  through  time.  But  this  proud  imposture, 
disowning  every  thing  hke  an  infancy,  disdaining  all 
idea  of  having  ever  been  less  and  afterward  greater, 
and  defying  all  computation  of  time,  makes  the  past, 
back  to  an  inconceivable  distance,  the  peculiar  scene 
of  its  magnificence.  And  it  teaches  its  devotees  to 
regard  its  continued  presence  on  earth  not  as  the  pro- 
gress of  a  cause  advancing  and  brightening  into  great- 
ness and  triumph,  but  merely  as  something  of  the  ra- 
diance reaching  thus  far,  and  with  fainter  splendor, 
from  that  glory  so  divine  in  the  remote  past.  Its 
primeval  manifestation  was  of  such  power  as  to  pro- 
long the  effect  even  to  this  late  period,  in  which  the 
faithful  worshipers  have  to  look  back  so  far  to 
behold  the  glory  of  that  vision  it  once  condescended 
to  unfold  on  thi  world.  The  grand  point  of  attrac- 
tion being  thus  placed  in  a  past  so  stupendous  as  to 
assume  almost  a  character  of  eternity,  the  contempla- 
tions, the  devotional  feelings,  and  the  self-complacen- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  99 

cy  are  drawn  away  in  a  retrospective  direction,  and 
leave  behind  in  contempt  all  modern  inventions  of 
faith  or  institution,  as  the  insignificant  follies  sprung 
from  the  cori-uption  of  a  Heaven-abandoned  period  of 
time.  The  sentiments  excited  in  them  by  the  many 
signs  of  decay  in  the  exterior  apparatus  of  their  sys- 
tem, such  as  the  ruined  state  of  innumerable  temples, 
will  rather  coincide  with  this  attraction  in  carrying 
the  homage  and  the  pride  to  the  glory  that  was  once, 
than  lead  to  any  suspicion  of  a  futility  for  which  the 
system  deserves  to  grow  out  of  use.  This  retrospect- 
ive magnitude,  this  absorption  of  all  past  dm-ation  in 
their  reliofion,  this  reduction  to  insignificance  of  what- 
ever  else  has  existed  (if,  indeed,  all  that  has  existed 
has  not  been  comprehended  in  it),  can  not  fail  to  pro- 
duce a  degree  of  elation  in  the  minds  of  the  Hindoos, 
notwithstanding  their  incapability  of  genuine  sublimity 
of  conception  and  emotion. 

And  again,  however  slight  their  affections  toward 
their  coteraporary  relatives,  the  idea  of  an  ancestry 
extending  back  through  unnumbered  generations,  all 
having  had  their  whole  intellectual  and  moral  exist- 
ence involved  inseparably  in  their  religion,  and  surren- 
dering in  succession  their  souls  to  become  a  kind  of 
guardians  or  portions  of  it,  must  add  a  more  vital  prin- 
ciple of  attraction  to  the  majestic  authority  and  sanc- 
tion of  such  an  antiquity.  Generations  of  little  ac- 
count in  their  own  times  may  acquire,  when  passed 
away  to  be  contemplated  as  ancestry,  a  certain  power 


100  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

over  the  imagination  by  becoming  invested  with  some- 
thing of  the  character  of  another  world — a  venerable- 
ness  which  combines  with  and  augments  the  interest 
which  they  hold  in  our  thoughts  as  having  once  be- 
longed to  our  mortal  fraternity.  This  combined  inter- 
est going  wholly  into  the  sentiments  of  religion,  in 
the  pagans  of  whom  we  speak,  they  will  feel  as  if  a 
violation  of  that  would  be  an  insult  to  each  of  the  innu- 
merable souls  of  the  great  religious  family  departed, 
all  worthier  of  respect  than  any  tliat  are  now  living  in 
the  world  from  which  they  have  vanished.  This 
habitual  refer6nce  to  their  ancestors,  with  a  certain 
sense  of  responsibility,  is  maintained  by  various  notions 
and  rites  of  their  superstition,  expressly  contrived  for 
the  purj:ose,  as  well  as  by  the  pride  which  they  can 
all  feel,  though  they  be  but  little  sensible  to  the  kind 
of  poetical  charm  which  might  be  felt,  in  thus  stand- 
ing connected,  through  identity  .of  religious  character 
and  economy,  with  the  remotest  antiquity. 

Nor  can  tlie  influence  be  small,  in  the  way  of  con- 
firmed sanction  and  cherished  pride,  of  beholding 
that  which  has  been  the  element  of  the  moial  exist- 
ence of  an  almost  infinite  train  of  predecessors, 
attested  still,  as  to  its  most  material  parts,  by  a  world 
of  beings  at  this  hour  coinciding  with  the  devotee  in 
regarding  it  as  their  honor,  their  sanctity,  and  their 
supreme  law.  Let  the  Hindoo  direct  his  attention  or 
his  travels  whichever  way  he  will,  within  the  circuit 
of  a  thousand  leagues,  he  meets  with  a  crowding  sue- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  101 

cession,  without  end,  of  living,  thinking  creatures,  who, 
notwithstanding  many  capricious  diversifications  of 
their  general  faith,  live  but  to  believe  and  act  as  he 
does  with  regard  to  the  most  revered  of  its  imposi- 
tions. And  what,  in  effect,  do  they  all  think  and  act 
so  for,  but  as  evidence  that  he  is  right  ?  The  mmd 
can  rest  its  assurance  of  its  own  rectitude  of  persua- 
sion on  this  wide  concurrence  of  belief  without  there- 
fore acknowledging  to  itself  a  degraded  dependence. 
Its  mode  of  seeing  tlie  matter  is,  not  that  the  faith  of 
a  large  assemblage  of  other  minds  is  its  faith,  but  that 
its  faith  is  theirs  ;  not — I  think  and  act  as  they  do ; 
but.  They  think  and  act  as  I  do.  This  sort  of  ambi- 
tious expansion  outward,  from  the  individual  as  a  cen- 
ter, saves  his  pride  of  reason  from  being  humihated  by 
the  consideration  of  the  sameness  of  his  notions  with 
those  of  the  great  mass.  The  sense  of  community  in 
human  nature  is  strongly  and  delightfully  admitted, 
when  agreeing  multitudes  corroborate  a  man's  opinions 
without  depriving  him  of  the  self-complacency  of  be- 
lieving that  he  holds  them  in  the  strength  of  his  own 
wisdom. 

This  corroborating  influence  of  the  consent  of  co- 
temporary  multitudes  in  the  most  essential  points  of  the 
system,  has,  as  we  have  already  hinted,  its  effect 
among  the  Hindoos,  even  without  the  intervention  of 
social  affection.  Never  did  any  where  a  great  num- 
ber of  human  creatures  exist  together  with  so  little  of 
the  attachments  of  kindred  and  friendship.     It  is  a 


102  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

striking  illustration  of  the  tendency  of  their  supersti- 
tion, that  it  nearly  abolishes  these  interests,  keeping 
the  whole  population  in  the  state  of  detached  and 
most  selfish  particles.  This  seems  indeed  to  be  fore- 
going one  of  the  strongest  means  of  power,  since  a 
system  of  notions  and  moral  principles  might  find  the 
greatest  account  in  so  combining  itself  with  the  affec- 
tions of  nature  as  to  engage  them  for  auxiliaries. 
But  then  what  a  triumph  of  this  bad  cause,  that  while, 
instead  of  enticino;  these  charities  into  its  service,  it 
tramples  on  and  destroys  them,  it  can,  notwithstand- 
ing, make  this  assemblage  of  dissocial,  selfish  beings 
act  upon  one  another  in  confirmation  of  their  common 
delusion  with  an  effect  even  greater  than  that  which 
might  have  arisen  from  friendly  sympathy.  Of  little 
worth  in  one  another's  esteem  as  relatives  and  friends, 
it  is  as  things  which  the  gods  have  set  their  stamp  upon 
that  they  have  their  grand  value.  The  religion  is 
accounted  to  inhabit,  in  so  very  formal  a  mode  of 
existence,  the  persons  of  all  its  subjects,  that  they 
have  the  eflfect  of  figures  sculptured  on  their  temples, 
or  of  leaves  of  their  sacred  books  of  mythology.  The 
seal  or  brand  of  the  deities  set  upon  them  does 
not  indeed  dignify  them  all,  but  it  makes  them  all 
vouchers  to  the  religion.  They  all  in  conjunction 
personify,  as  it  were,  that  system,  which  as  much  re- 
quires the  existence  of  Soodras  to  verify  it  as  of  Brah- 
mins. The  "  miry  clay"  of  the  feet  is  as  essential  a 
part  as  the  royal  material  of  the  head. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  103 

Thus  the  vast  multitude  are  made  to  serve  just  as 
surety  to  one  another,  and  all  to  each,  for  the  verity 
of  the  superstition.  And  as  the  existence  of  any  of 
them  on  any  other  account  had  been  impertinent, 
their  existence  in  such  prodigious  numbers  must  needs 
seem  to  demonstrate  a  mighty  importance  in  that  for 
evidence  and  exemplification  of  which  it  was  worth 
while  for  them  to  be  so  many. 

With  so  despotic  a  command  over  the  people's 
minds,  it  would  have  been  strange  if  this  empire  of 
delusion  had  forborne  to  assume  the  advantage  and 
security  of  those  temporalities  which  no.  other  spirit- 
ual tyranny  was  ever  abstracted-  enough  to  forget, 
and  which,  indeed,  it  would  have  been  a  foolish  im- 
policy to  forego.  Indirectly,  it  possesses  this  mode 
of  strength  in  having  for  its  subjects  the  princely  and 
opulent  persons  of  the  community.  Their  secular 
rank  renders  service,  not  only  by  its  natural  influence 
on  the  people  of  lower  condition,  but  by  the  homage 
of  an  acknowledged  intrinsic  inferiority  of  that  rank 
to  the  highest  of  the  distinctions  founded  in  religion. 
Their  mansions,  gardens,  and  groves  are  made  to  tes- 
tify, by  all  the  permanent  signs  of  dedication,  that 
their  property  and  state  are  held  under  the  paramount 
rights  of  the  divinities.  But  these  divinities  have  also 
their  direct  revenues,  in  the  shape  of  fixed,  and  many 
of  them  ancient,  appropriations ;  with  the  addition  of 
an  undefined  right  of  exaction,  enforced  by  priests  and 
consecrated  mendicants  upon  the  religious  charity  of 


104  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

the  people.  This  charity  is  in  one  sense  voluntary ; 
but  when  it  is  considered  with  what  lofty  pretensions 
these  applicants  make  their  demands  (not  unfrequent- 
ly  even  assuming  some  mode  of  identity  with  the  gods 
themselves),  and  what  benefits  or  curses  are  declared, 
and  by  the  people  believed,  to  depend  infallibly  on 
their  surrendering  or  withholding  the  tribute  required, 
it  is  easy  to  judge  how  much  these  offerings,  and 
their  quantity,  are  left  to  free  will. 

Their  own  rio-hts  and  those  of  their  idols  mifjht  be 
trusted,  for  the  power  of  maintaining  them,  to  men 
whose  demands  of  a  share  of  the  superstitious  culti- 
vator's produce  are  to  be  resisted  at  the  beheved 
hazard  of  a  blast  on  the  whole.  As  if,  however,  both 
such  endowments,  and  such  force  of  requisition,  had 
left  cause  to  fear  that  this  infernal  hierarchy  sliould 
become  deficient  in  the  substantial  resources  for  pre- 
serving its  dominion  of  delusion  and  iniquity,  the 
Christian  government  over  India  has  sought  the  honor 
of  being  its  auxiliary ;  in  which  capacity  it  is  at  once 
accepted  and  despised  by  the  descendants  of  Brahma. 
The  aid  has  been  afforded,  not  simply  in  the  way  of 
securing,  in  observance  of  the  principle  of  toleration, 
the  pagan  worship  and  means  of  worship  from  violent 
interference,  but  in  the  form  of  a  positive  active  patron- 
age. The  administration  of  tlie  funds  for  the  ceremo- 
nial and  abominations  of  idolatry  has  been,  to  a  very 
great  extent,  taken  under  the  authority  and  care  of 
the  reigning  power,  composed  of  persons  zealous  on 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  105 

this  nearer  side  of  a  certain  extent  of  water  for  the 
established  Christian  rehgion,  which  establishment  has 
also  been  extended  to  that  farther  side — with  what 
effect  toward  exploding,  or  even  modifying,  this  very- 
marvelous  policy,  or  whether  deemed  to  be  perfectly 
harmonious  with  it,  we  must  wait  to  be  informed.* 
In  the  mean  time,  the  religious  public  are  amply  in- 
formed of  a  course  of  measures  having  been  deliber- 
ately pursued,  tending  to  support  and  prolong  the 
ascendency  of  paganism.  It  has  been  disclosed  to 
their  view  that  the  highest  authority  has  taken  upon 
itself  the  regulation  of  the  economy  of  idols'  temples, 
had  restored  endowments  which  had  been  alienated, 
and  has  made  additional  allowances  from  the  public 
revenue,  where  the  existing  appropriations  have  been 

*  The  writer  has  been  told,  that  certain  readers  have  taken  offense  at 
something  in  this  passage.  He  can  not  well  understand  why  ;  and  per- 
haps those  readers  would  not  be  much  disposed  to  explain.  The  two 
facts  are,  that  the  government,  that  is,  the  government  of  England,  has 
adopted  a  polic-y  of  superintending  and  patronizing  the  idolatrous  estab- 
lishments in  India  ;  and  that,  while  systematically  pursuing  this  policy, 
they  have  also  appointed  and  endowed  a  Christian  ecclesiastical  estab- 
lishment there.  Now,  they  do,  or  tlic?y  do  not,  consider  this  measure  of 
establishing  a  Christian  national  Church  there  as  compatible,  consistent, 
harmonious  with  that  policy  of  sanctioning  idolatry.  Do  they,  or  do 
they  not?  Which  part  of  the  alternative  to  assume  it  may  not  be  very 
easy  for  candor  to  decide.  As  to  the  fact  of  the  systematic  policy  in 
question,  it  has  been  formally  stated,  or  incidentally  mentioned,  in  sever- 
al publications  relating  to  India.  But  whoever  may  wish  to  see  it  ex- 
posed in  its  full  extent  and  evidence,  may  find  it  (but  indeed  many  of  our 
readers  must  well  renipmber  it)  in  a  long  cjid  very  able  and  important 
article  in  the  twelfth  volume  of  the  Christian  Observer  (the  numbers 
for  October  and  November,  1813;.  We  do  not  hear  of  any  change  hav- 
ing taken  place  in  the  system. 

5* 


106  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

judged  inadequate  to  preserve  to  those  establishments 
the  requisite  dignity — requisite  for  what,  but  to  pre- 
vent any  relaxation  of  the  hold  which  the  imposture 
has  on  the  people  ?  And,  be  it  remembered,  the  rev- 
enue which  is  to  afford  this  aid  is  constantly  pressing 
heavily  for  its  means  of  competence  on  the  distressed 
resources  of  this  Christian  country. 

We  can  not  presume  to  conjecture  how  much  soon- 
er this  accessional  means  of  power  will  begin  to  fail 
than  those  ancient  ones  with  which  the  system  was 
invested  when  none  of  its  gods  or  sages  could  have 
foreseen  a  reserve  of  assistance  in  such  a  quarter. 
Perhaps  a  confidence — entertained  upon  the  assurance 
of  that  "  lying  spirit"  whose  prophets  were  once  be- 
fore trusted  in  by  a  government — a  confidence  that 
this  pagan  system  will  be  permanent — contributes  to 
prevent  any  alarm  respecting  the  judicial  notice 
which  the  Governor  of  the  world  might  take  of  its 
Christian  supporters,  in  the  event  of  His  striking  it 
down. 

AGENCY    OF    INFERNAL    SPIRITS. 

If  we  add  to  all  these  modes  and  causes  of  the 
mightiness  of  this  superstition  the  indefatigable  activ- 
ity of  the  powers  of  darkness,  meaning,  literally,  infer- 
nal intelligences,  which  we  believe  to  be  busy  in  this 
world,  it  might  be  readily  admitted,  we  should  imag- 
ine, that  there  is  nothing  in  it  worthier  to  have  sprung 
from  the  inspiration,  or  to  be  kept  in  force  by  the 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  107 

energy,  of  such  malignity  and  agency.  If  there  are 
theologians  who  deny  the  inteiTention  of  such  a  cause 
in  this  enormity  of  evil,  is  it,  perhaps,  that  they  feel 
some  need  and  use  of  its  being  laid  to  the  sole  account 
of  man,  for  supporting  that  other  favorite  opinion  of 
theirs,  which  denies  the  radical  corruption  of  his  na- 
ture ?  What  new  hopes,  or  consistencies,  or  facilities, 
for  the  prosecution  of  this  warfare,  might  be  afforded 
by  their  view  of  the  matter,  which  makes  the  human 
nature  to  be  so  excellent,  and  makes  all  this  to  be  its 
spontaneous  product,  it  would  be  of  no  use  for  us  to 
stay  to  inquire,  since  it  is  our  destiny  to  proceed  in 
the  contest  under  the  notion  that  such  magnitude  of 
evil  can  be  no  less  than  the  leagued  depravity  of  two 
bad  natures.  Those  who  can  ascribe  it  all  to  one,  and 
at  the  same  time  entertain  a  high  veneration  for  that 
one,  would  seem  to  make  no  very  contemptible  approxi- 
mation, in  point  of  rationality,  toward  the  idolatry  of 
which  we  have  been  speaking. 

Now,  can  a  system  of  intellectual  and  moral  per- 
version, of  which  the  demoniac  strength  is  but  slightly 
developed  in  this  brief  description  of  some  of  its  char- 
acteristics, show  itself  in  the  view  of  the  adherents  of 
the  true  religion,  without  conveying  a  provocation  to 
their  conscience  and  zeal  to  come  forth,  in  aid  of  any 
reasonable  project  for  carrying  a  new  power  into  at- 
tack on  what  has,  through  so  many  ages,  maintained 
its  character  of  a  defier  of  the  li\  ing  God,  in  spite  of 
all  that  might  have  been  supposed  to  operate  to  war  .1 


108  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

its  destruction  from  time,  and  nature,  and  the  vaunted 
reason  of  man?  Those  who  partake  of  the  spirit  of 
Ehjah,  and  are  "  very  jealous  for  the  Lord  of  Hosts," 
will  wish  that  good  men  might  be  moved  to  conspire 
in  a  unanimous  hostility,  which  shall  be  carried  into 
effect  through  being  sent  up  as  a  devout  service  and 
appeal  to  Heaven,  to  be  thence  returned  (for  it  is  in 
this  reflected  power  that  Christian  zeal  has  its  effi- 
cacy), to  be  thence  returned,  as  in  burning  rays,  to 
scorch  and  blast,  here  and  there,  the  extended  array 
of  idolatry,  and  at  length  to  annihilate  it.  But,  in 
thinking  of  such  a  conspiring  zeal,  thus  reflected  with 
an  intensity  not  its  own,  to  consume  the  mass  of  abomi- 
nation, it  is  for  each  one  to  ask  within  himself,  Is 
there  not  in  that  system,  made  up  of  so  many  deprav- 
ities, some  small  part,  some  poisonous  atom,  some  ser- 
pent vehicle  of  an  evil  principle,  which  /  may  be, 
through  the  same  divine  force  imparted  in  its  measure 
to  the  humblest  individual's  eflbrt,  the  means  of  de- 
stroying ?  And  that  minute  portion  of  active  principle 
which  noxiously  works  on  in  consequence  of  my  not 
crushing  it — may  it  not  be  accounted  to  work  in  my 
name,  making  my  contribution,  real  however  diminu- 
tive, to  the  deadly  eff"ect  of  that  system  which  I  might 
contribute  just  so  much  to  abolish  ?  But  even  though 
the  state  of  the  matter  were,  that  no  actual  effect  at 
all  should  result,  none  discernible  by  Him  who  dis- 
criminates every  thing  included  in  all  things,  still 
might  I  not  be  required,  in  mere  proof  of  my  fidelity 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  109 

to  Him,  to  give  some  demonstration  of  hatred,  to  fling 
some  practical  salutation  of  war,  against  an  infernal 
monster  that,  in  character  of  a  constellation  of  gods, 
arrogates  the  worship  of  a  large  portion  of  the  human 
race,  and  repays  it  with  perdition  ?  Can  I  hope  to 
go,  without  some  haunting  sense  of  dishonor,  to  that 
superior  empire  of  the  Almighty,  w^here  exery possible- 
sentiment  of  devotion  is  in  actual  excitement,  from  a 
region  where  I  have  been  nearly  at  peace  with  such 
an  odious  usurpation  ? 

But  even  this  state  of  peace  with  it  has  not  been 
enough  for  some  of  our  countrymen  to  maintain  ;  and 
we  think  the  partiality,  arising  in  some  instances 
almost  to  fanaticism,  which,  both  at  home  and  abroad, 
they  have  manifested  without  reserve  for  this  grossest 
paganism,  may  serve  to  enforce  our  demand  on  Chris- 
tian zeal.  It  may  do  so,  partly,  by  the  illustration 
thus  afforded  of  the  quahty  of  the  design,  since  that 
may  be  presumed  to  be  greatly  excellent  which  has 
had  the  exact  effect  of  irritating  out  by  contrariety 
the  worst  vice  lurking  in  profane  minds ;  and  it  may 
additionally  do  so  by  the  consideration,  that  if  a  pecu- 
liarly odious  kind  of  depravity,  of  the  existence  of 
which  there  was  perhaps  no  previous  suspicion,  sud- 
denly discloses  itself  in  a  nation,  there  should  be  an  ex- 
traordinary effort  to  promote  a  counterbalancing  good. 
Such  an  effort,  besides  that  it  is  due  to  the  honor  of 
God,  would  seem  to  be  called  for  in  behalf  of  the 
character  of  a  Christian  people.     It  may  also  involve 


110  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

somewhat  of  tliat  policy,  in  reference  to  their  welfare, 
which  sober  men  would  not  easily  pronounce  super- 
stitious as  exemplified  in  the  parallel  case  of  a  ship, 
in  which,  if  several  of  the  passengers  were  expressly 
and  ravingly  insulting  Omnipotence,  any  others,  fear- 
ing the  "  God  of  the  sea  and  the  dry  land,"  Avould 
consider  an  extraordinary  deu'ree  of  homacfe  rendered 
to  Ilim  on  their  part,  in  direct  contravention,  a  matter 
not  altogether  foreign  to  the  safety  of  the  vessel.  If 
their  devotion  had  be.-n,  in  the  first  instance,  the  cause 
of  bi'inging  out  this  malignant  impiety,  they  would 
be  certain,  upon  the  exhibition  of  it,  rather  to  double 
than  remit  the  earnestness  and  frequency  of  their 
prayers. 

The  promoters  and  immediate  experimenters  of  a 
Christian  attempt  on  the  pagans  of  the  East  naturally 
expected,  in  spite  of  the  pretended  miraculous  mild- 
ness of  the  Hindoo  character,  to  encounter  a  strenu- 
ous and  perhaps  a  malicious  opposition  from  the 
idolaters.  But  it  was  hardly  within  their  calculation, 
that  a  very  considerable  number  of  persons  of  some 
note  in  England — men  enjoying  the  advantages  of 
education ;  of  weight  in  the  legislation,  the  mercantile 
system,  and  the  literature,  of  the  country ;  belonging 
to  its  respected  ranks,  classes,  and  professions ;  and 
avowing  for  the  most  part,  a  veneration  for  the  reli- 
gious establishment — would  be  provoked  to  join  in  a 
violent  outcry  against  a  scheme  for  imparting  the 
gospel  to  the  people  of  India.     Still  less  was  it  an- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  Ill 

ticipated  of  what  strain  the  only  music  in  this  clamor 
was  to  be ;  that  the  virulent  invective  ao-ainst  the 
"pernicious  fanaticism"  of  missionary  enterprise  would 
ever  and  anon  be  heard  modulatino-  itself  to  an  ex- 
pression  of  indulgent  partiahty  toward  the  execrable 
superstition  threatened  by  that  enterprise.  Tliere 
had  not  been  in  this  country  so  free  a  display  of  every 
infidel  propensity  as  to  render  it  a  matter  of  familiar 
observation,  that  men  who  hate  the  intrusion  of  a 
divine  jurisdiction  are  much  inclined  to  regard  with 
favor  a  mode  of  pretended  religion,  which  they  can 
make  light  of  as  devoid  of  all  real  authority.  They 
are  so  inclined  because,  through  its  generic  quality 
(of  religion),  it  somewhat  assists  them  to  make  light 
also  of  a  more  formidable  thing  of  that  quahty  and 
name.  It  comes,  probably,  with  a  great  show  of 
claims — antiquity,  pretended  miracles,  and  an  im- 
mense number  of  believers  ;  it  may,  nevertheless,  be 
disbelieved  with  most  certain  impunity.  Under  the 
encouragement  of  this  disbelief  with  impmiity,  the 
mind  ventures  to  look  toward  other  religions,  and  at 
last  toward  the  Christian.  That  also  has  its  anti- 
quity, its  recorded  miracles,  and  its  multitude  of  be- 
lievers. Though  there  may  not,  perhaps,  be  impious 
assurance  enough  to  assume  formally  the  equality 
of  the  pretensions  in  the  two  cases,  there  is  a  success- 
ful eageiness  to  escape  from  the  evidence  tliat  the 
apparent  simihii'ity  is  superficial,  and  the  real  differ- 
ence infinite ;  and  the  irreligious  spirit  springs  rapidly 


112  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

and  gladly,  in  its  disbelief,  from  the  one,  as  a  step- 
ping-place  to  the  other.  But  that  which  affords  such 
an  important  convenience  for  surmounting  the  awe  of 
the  true  religion  will  naturally  be  a  great  favorite, 
even  at  the  very  moment  it  is  seen  to  be  contemp- 
tible, and,  indeed,  in  a  sense,  in  consequence  of  its 
being  so.  Complacency  mingles  Avith  the  very  con- 
tempt for  that  from  which  contempt  may  rebound  on 
Christianity. 

These  fierce  advocates  of  paganism  it  were  in  vain 
to  warn  of  a  time  when  the  summons  to  them  will  be, 
in  effect,  to  "  come  forth  against  the  Lord,"  if  they 
dare  then  repeat  their  well-remembered  words  of  rev- 
erence for  idolatry  ;*  a  time  when  their  impious  af- 
fectation of  liberal  homage  to  all  **  religions,"  as  prop- 
er and  useful  for  their  respective  parts  of  the  world, 
will  give  place  to  the  insufferable  conviction  of  having 
insultingly  rejected  that  infinite  good,  which  only  one 
had  to  offer ;  and  when  their  contemptuous  disallow- 
ance of  any  higher  rule  of  judging  and  proceeding 
with  respect  to  a  people's  religion,  than  the  consider- 
ation of  how  it  may  affect  government  and  commerce, 
will  come  to  be  estimated  and  pronounced  upon,  in  a 
scene  where  all  worldly  policy  will  be  at  an  end — 
excepting  in  its  retribution ^  and  where   so  many  mil- 

*  The  most  furious  of  them,  a  person  under  a  military  designation 
is  dead  since  this  was  written.  The  most  jocuhir,  vulgar,  and  far 
enough  from  least  malicious  of  the  revilers.of  the  design  for  convcrtinrr 
the  idolaters,  a  person  with  the  ecclesiastical  prefix  to  his  name,  still 
lives. 


OR,  THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  113 

lions  will  be  awaiting:  tlie  consio-nment,  whatever  it 
may  be,  for  which  they  will  have  grown  to  a  fitness 
as  subjects  of  a  false  and  depraving  religion.  Then 
will  such  men  meet  their  account  with  the  fabricators 
and  imposers  of  false  religions  to  serve  their  ambition, 
with  apostates,  and  whatever  other  enemies  of  Christ 
will  hear  with  despair  the  sentence,  '*  Behold,  ye  de- 
spise'rs,  and  wonder,  and  perish."  It  can  be  of  no 
use,  we  repeat,  to  admonish  them  ;  but  we  may  urge 
it  on  the  friends  of  true  religion  and  the  illumination 
of  the  world,  that  to  this  phenomenon  of  a  zealous 
avowal  and  effort  in  favor  of  paganism,  in  this  Chris- 
tian country,  in  this  stage  of  its  knowledge,  their  con- 
trary zeal  and  exertion  should  be  what  the  living  rod 
of  Moses  was  to  the  serpent  of  the  magicians. 

It  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  acknowledged  that 
there  is  a  great  abatement  of  the  public  manifestation 
of  this  disposition  to  vindicate  idolatry,  and  this  ani- 
mosity against  all  attempts  to  reduce  its  dominion. 
However  unallayed  the  rancorous  sentiment  may  re- 
main, it  has  been  found  that  its  unqualified  exposure 
is  a  little  incommodious  on  the  score  of  character. 
Indeed,  in  the  season  of  its  most  virulent  eruption, 
some  of  the  persons  in  whom  it  raged  thought  it  worth 
while  (others  were  more  bold  or  honest)  to  endeavor 
to  give  it  a  disguised  appearance.  It  was  made  to 
inspirit  some  argument  of  pretended  political  expe- 
diency. It  was  vented  under  the  form  of  a  represent- 
ation, urged  with  every  seeming  of  a  most  sincere  and 


114  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

wrathful  earnestness,  that  missionary  proceedings, 
permitted  but  a  very  httle  while  longer,  would  infalli- 
bly work  the  destruction  of  the  British  empire  in 
Asia;  although  it  is  probable  that  some  of  these 
malignants  laughed  in  private  at  such  as  might  be 
simple  enough  to  let  themselves  become,  upon  this 
representation,  affected  with  this  panic.  Such  asser- 
tions were  hazarded  in  a  sanguine  confidence,  for  which 
it  is  a  lamentable  reflection  on  our  country  that  there 
should  have  been  no  slight  grounds,  that  the  matter 
would  not  be  suffered  to  proceed  to  the  trial.  But  a 
power  from  Heaven  interposed,  acting  partly  by  the 
instrumentality  of  the  zeal  of  the  religious  part  of  the 
community  ;  the  government  were  decided  to  prolong 
the  impunity  of  the  reviled  missionaries,  which  author- 
ity in  their  favor  lias  silenced  many  that  were  incapa- 
ble of  feeling  any  restraint  from  the  fear  of  God  ;  and 
time  and  experience  have  brought  contempt  on  all 
their  rant  of  prognostication. 

We  have  alluded  to  such  men  only  to  gain  from 
them  a  service,  for  which  we  shall  owe  them  no 
thanks.  Religion  sliould  keep  pace  with  physical 
science  in  the  art  of  making:  noxious  thinofs  contribute 
to  salutary  operations.  No  bad  moral  force,  if  it  can 
not  be  annihihited,  sliould  be  left  free  from  attempts 
to  cheat  it  into  a  contrary  action  to  what  it  naturally 
intends ;  and  wc  wish  to  make  the  force  of  evil, 
emitted  from  these  men's  minds,  act  in  coincident 
impulse  with   the  motives  which  should    carry   the 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  115 

servants  of  God  into  a  closer  and  still  more  animated 
conflict  with  the  powers  of  heathen  darkness. 

THE    PROGRESS    OF    MISSIONS    ENCOURAGING. 

This  good  cause  has  prevailed  on  the  judgment, 
and  obtained  the  practical  aid,  of  the  religious  pub- 
lic, to  an  extent  which  we  are  willing  to  regard  as  an 
omen  from  Heaven  of  great  effects  to  be  accomplish- 
ed in  its  progress.  But  it  is  not  improbable  there 
may  still  remain,  among  a  minority  of  good  men, 
some  feelings  not  quite  reconciled  to  schemes  of  such 
wide  scope,  such  interminable  demands  of  assistance, 
and  such  a  distant  field  of  execution ;  schemes,  too, 
which  can  not  be  named  but  as  amidst  the  echo  of 
ten  thousand  voices,  of  men  in  repute  for  sense, 
hardly  yet  ceasing  to  pronounce  them  chimerical  and 
fanatical ;  schemes  but  partially  emerging  from  that 
general  ridicule  which  leaves,  though  abated,  such 
marks  upon  an  object,  that  most  men  are  long 
ashamed  to  entertain  it. 

There  is  much  difference  of  mental  constitution  for 
receiving  the  impression  of  such  projects.  There  is 
a  class  of  good  men  naturally  formed  to  be  exceed- 
ingly sober,  and  cautious,  and  deliberate,  and  anxious 
for  all  things  to  be  kept  in  right  proportions  and 
manageable  compass.  Excellent  qualities — adapted 
specifically  to  some  departments  of  duty,  and  of 
great  use  in  a  certain  measure  of  interference  in  all. 


116 

But  let  it  be  suggested  to  their  possessors,  that  there 
is,  jperhaps,  no  class  of  men  so  apt  to  overvalue  their 
pecuHar  endowments,  in  contradistinction  to  those  of 
a  different  order;  and  no  class  more  needing  to  be 
warned  of  the  faults  akin  to  their  virtues,  and  into 
which  those  virtues  are  liable  to  be  insensibly  trans- 
muted. Nor,  while  they  are  in  an  especial  manner 
ready  to  take  credit  to  themselves  for  independence 
of  judgment,  are  there  any  good  men  whose  feelings 
and  opinions  are  more  at  the  mercy  of  those  from 
whom  they  differ ;  no  class  being  liable  to  be  driven 
farther  on  one  side  the  middle  line,  in  a  concern  of 
duty,  by  what  appears  to  them  an  extreme  on  the 
othei-.  And  in  their  own  extreme,  when  they  have 
once  taken  their  position  there,  they  will  maintain 
themselves  with  all  that  stiffness  of  temper,  which, 
to  deserve  the  name  of  firmness  or  independence, 
ought  to  have  kept  them  out  of  it. 

It  may  be  conceded  to  these  worthy  men,  that  the 
advocates  of  missions  have  not  always  avoided  ex- 
travagance. Especially  when  under  the  influence  of 
a  large  assembly,  supposed  to  be  animated  by  inter- 
ests which  extend  to  the  happiness  of  a  world,  they 
may  have  been  excited  to  use  a  language  which 
seemed  to  magnify  these  interests,  and  the  projects 
in  which  tliey  were  embodied,  at  the  expense  of  all 
other  duties  and  concerns  ;  insomuch  that  some  of 
those  extra  prudent  friends  of  ours  in  the  auditory- 
have  been  wondering  what,  at  that  rate  of  devote- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  117 

ment  of  time,  exertion,  and  money,  we  are  to  do, 
not  only  with  the  other  claims  of  religious  duty,  but 
with  the  whole  ordinary  economy  of  life,  pressing 
upon  us  as  it  does  with  so  many  peremptory  de- 
mands. But  allowance  must  be  made  for  a  little  ex- 
cess in  the  pleader  of  such  a  cause.  Its  great  im- 
portance, of  which  he  is  at  all  times  soberly  certain, 
expands  into  a  kind  of  dazzling  magnificence  before 
him  when  a  multitude  of  minds  seem  to  be  contem- 
plating it  in  sympathy  with  him.  It  appears  to  him 
as  bright  with  a  reflection  of  all  the  complacent  re- 
gards which  those  minds  are  fixing  upon  it.  Under 
such  a  temporary  animating  influence,  all  the  topics 
and  arguments  which  he  has  previously  accumulated 
in  favor  of  the  selected  subject  become,  as  it  were, 
dilated  and  on  fire,  without  an}?-  intentional  exaggera- 
tion ;  and  unless  he  had  a  capacity,  like  Bacon,  of 
keeping  all  subjects  w^ithin  his  view  almost  at  once,  in 
their  relative  proportions  as  in  a  map,  he  will  natu- 
rally represent  the  claims  of  the  selected  one  in  terras 
partaking  a  little  too  much  of  ambition  and  monopoly. 
We  can  not  wonder  that  our  calculating  friends  should 
be  making  in  their  minds  a  strong  protest  against  this 
excess ;  but  they  are  aware  how  little  they  need  en- 
tertain any  apprehension  for  its  consequences,  as  well 
knowing  that  the  persons  addressed  are  never  be- 
trayed into  such  enthusiasm  as  to  forget  to  take  the 
practical  standard  of  their  duty  at  a  sufficient  reduc- 


118  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

tion  of  the  requirement  made  or  implied  in  the  hy- 
perboHcul  language  of  the  advocate. 

AVhile,  however,  some  concession  is  thus  made  to 
the  cautious,  good  men,  who  are  more  afraid  of  ex- 
travagance than  of  all  other  ei-rors  in  designs  fur  pro- 
moting religion,  they  must  be  told  that  it  would  have 
been  an  ill  fate  for  Christianity  in  the  world  if  Chris- 
tians of  their  temperament  could  always  have  held 
the  ascendency  in  projecting  its  operations.  If  they 
would  for  a  moment  put  themselves,  in  imagination, 
in  the  case  of  being  cotemporary  with  Wicliff,  or 
"with  Luther,  and  of  being  applied  to  by  one  of  these 
daring  spirits  for  advice,  we  may  ask  what  counsel 
they  can  suppose  themselves  to  have  given  ?  They 
can  not  but  be  instantly  conscious  that,  though  they 
had  been  Protestants  at  heart,  their  disposition  would 
have  been  to  array  and  magnify  the  objections  and 
dangers — to  dwell  in  emphatic  terms  on  the  inveter- 
ate, all- comprehensive,  and  resistless  dominion  of  the 
papal  church,  established  in  every  soul  and  body  of 
the  people — on  the  vigilance  and  prompt  malignity 
of  the  priests,  and  on  the  insignificance,  as  to  any 
probable  effect,  of  an  obscure  individual's  efforts 
against  an  immense  and  marvelously  well-oiganized 
system  of  imposture  and  iniquity — even  were  it  not 
the  extreme  of  folly  not  to  foresee  that  his  protesta- 
tion would  soon  bring  him  to  encounter  the  ultima 
ratio  of  his  provoked  enemy,  in  the  form  of  tribu- 
nals, dungeons,  and  death.     In  short,  if  in  those  in- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  119 

Stances  such  counsel  had  been  acted  upon  as  they 
■would  have  given,  that  zeal  which  was  kindling  and 
destined  to  lay  a  great  part  of  the  mightier  Babylon 
in  ashes  would  have  smouldered  and  expired  in  a 
languid,  listless  hope  that  the  Almighty  would  some 
time  create  such  a  juncture  of  circumstances  as  should 
admit  an  attempt  at  reformation  without  a  culpable 
and  useless  temerity.  And  so  we  might  [bat],  for 
WiclifF  and  Luther,  have  been  worshiping  waxen  toys, 
and  trusting  our  most  momentous  intei-ests  on  the 
strength  of  penances,  absolutions,  and  ceremonial 
antics,  at  this  very  day. 

And  to  descend  to  the  undertaking  now  under  con- 
sideration—all that  has  been  accomplished  by  it  in 
India,  and  is  now  accomplishing,  as  introductory,  we 
trust,  to  a  religious  change  not  less  glorious  or  exten- 
sive than  the  Reformation,  may  be  regarded  by  its 
active  fiiends  as,  in  some  sense,  a  reward  for  having 
refused  to  be  controlled  by  the  dissuasive  arguments 
and  desponding  predictions  of  many  xevy  worthy 
deprecators  of  rashness  and  enthusiasm. 

It  is  from  such  a  quarter  that  we  may  hear  disap- 
probation conveyed  in  the  question,  What  can  we  do 
aorainst  an  evil  of  such  enormous  mao^nitude,  and  so 
consolidated  ?  It  may  be  answered  (as  it  has  been 
already  suggested).  What  you  can  do,  if  the  expres- 
sion mean  what  precise  quantity  of  effect  a  severe 
calculation  may  promise  from  a  given  effort,  is  not 
always  to  be  the  rule  of  conduct ;  for  this  would  be 


120  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

to  deny  the  absolute  authority  of  the  divine  Master. 
We  refuse  to  obey  Him  for  His  own  sake,  if  "sve  as- 
sume to  place  the  governing  reason  for  all  the  serv- 
ices we  are  to  render  in  a  judgment  which  we  think 
we  can  ourselves  form,  whether  they  will  accomplish 
an  end  worth  the  labor,  and  therefore  to  fix  their 
limit  at  the  point  beyond  which  we  can  not  with  con- 
fidence extend  our  calculations.  Such  an  arrogant 
impiety,  carried  to  its  full  length,  would  at  last  de- 
mand of  Him  that  He  should  require  no  service  witli- 
out  placing  clearly  within  our  view  all  those  conse- 
quences of  it  on  which  His  own  just  reasons  for 
exacting  it  are  founded.  That  is,  it  would  become  a 
demand  to  be  exempted  from  all  services  wliatever. 

It  is  the  very  contrary  spirit  to  this  of  restrictive 
parsimonious  calculation  that  has  been  the  most  sig- 
nally honored,  inasmuch  as  some  of  the  most  effectual 
and  of  the  noblest  services  rendered  to  God  in  all 
time,  have  begun  much  more  in  the  prompting  of 
zeal  to  attempt  something  for  Him  as  it  were  at  all 
liazards,  than  in  rigorous  estimates  of  the  probable 
measure  of  effect. 

Let  it  be  observed,  also,  how  all  history  abounds 
with  great  ultimate  consequences  from  little  causes, 
in  which  fact  it  only  declares  and  exemplifies  a  pre- 
vailing law  in  the  constitution  of  the  world  ;  a  law  by 
which  the  diminutive  grows  to  the  large,  sparks  flame 
into  conflagrations,  fountains  originate  mighty  streams, 
and  most  inconsiderable  moral  agents  and  actions  are 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  121 

made  the  incipient  points  whence  trains  of  agencies 
and  effects,  proceeding  on  with  continual  accession, 
enlarge  into  effects  of  immense  magnitude.  Some  of 
these  great  results,  now  forming  most  important  cir- 
cumstances and  modifications  in  the  state  of  the 
human  race,  bear  on  them  a  peculiarity  of  character 
which  will  hardly  allow  us  to  look  at  them  without  a 
reference  in  thought  to  the  points  whence  the  pro- 
gression began.  They  appear,  notwithstanding  their 
extension,  with  a  certain  prominence  and  distinctness 
by  which  we  are  i-eminded  of  their  history,  while 
others  are  become  so  diffused  and  blended  into  the 
general  conformation  of  things,  that  their  own  distin- 
guishable color,  so  to  speak,  does  not  remain  obvious 
enough  to  excite  readily  or  necessarily  any  thought 
of  them  as  effects  which  may  be  retrospectively  traced 
to  precise  points,  where  their  causes  first  sprung  into 
action.  Much  of  the  actual  condition  of  our  part  of 
the  world  consists  of  a  number  of  these  grand  results 
of  enlarging  trains  of  effects,  progressive  from  the 
smallest  beainninos  at  various  distances  back  in  the 
past.  And  were  not  these  now  wide-spread  results 
so  combined  into  one  order  of  things  and  familiarized 
around  us,  and  were  not,  besides,  the  history  of  them 
so  deficient  and  confused,  it  might  very  often  be  a 
pleasing  employment  for  both  the  philosophic  and 
the  devout  mind  to  trace  them  backward  to  the  di- 
minutiveness  in  which  they  began.  A  mysterious 
hand  threw  a  particle  of  a  cause,  if  we  may  express  it 


122  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

SO,  among  the  elements  ;  it  had  the  principle  of  at- 
traction in  it ;  it  found  something  akin  to  it  to  com- 
bine with,  obtaining  so  an  augmentation  to  be  in- 
stantly again  augmented  of  the  attracting  and  assimi- 
lating power,  which  grew  in  a  ratio  that  became  at 
length  stupendous,  and  it  exhibits  the  final  result  (if 
any  result  yet  attained  could  be  called  final),  in 
something,  perhaps,  which  now  forms  the  most  im- 
portant distinction  and  advantage  of  a  nation,  or  of  a 
still  laiger  section  of  the  world.  What  was  the  com- 
mencement of  the  true  religion  in  this  land,  and  of 
those  several  reformati'-^ns  which  have  partly  restored 
it  from  its  corruptions  ?  And  what  would  be  the 
term  of  proportion,  according  to  our  principles  of 
judging,  between  the  object  as  seen  in  the  diminu- 
tiveness  of  the  incipient  cause  and  in  its  present  ex- 
tent of  prevalence — between  (if  we  may  be  allowed 
the  figure)  the  germ  in  the  acorn  and  the  majestic 
oak? 

A  result  thus  growing  to  an  immense  magnitude 
from  an  original  cause  apparently  so  insignificant,  is 
the  collective  consequence  of  a  great  number  of 
causes  progressively  starting  and  multiplying  into 
consentaneous  operation,  each  of  them  having  in  the 
same  manner  its  appropriate  enlarging  series  of  con- 
sequences, still  uniting  with  the  one  great  process. 
And  in  looking  to  the  future  progress  of  an  under- 
taking for  diffusing  Christianity  in  India,  is  it  not 
perfectly  rational  to  presume  that  many  small  means 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  123 

and  little  events  will  be,  in  their  respective  times  and 
places,  the  commencements,  and  in  a  sense  the  causes, 
of  trains  of  consequences  interminably  advancing  and 
enlarging  ? 

For  example,  we  may  imagine  the  destiny  of  some 
particular  copy  of  the  Bible  or  New  Testament,  in  one 
of  the  native  languages ;  and  a  strange  interest  would 
attach  to  such  a  volume,  could  there  be  any  sign  to 
indicate  this  destiny,  at  the  moment  of  its  issuing 
from  the  repository.  It  may  be  supposed  to  come 
into  the  hands,,  in  a  way  much  like  casualty,  of  a 
heathen  somewhat  more  thoughtful  than  his  compan- 
ions. Disgust  or  indignation  at  the  first  aspect  of 
what  he  finds  there  may  prompt  him  to  throw  away 
the  book,  which  he  may  perceive  to  be  virtually  an 
impeachment  of  his  religion,  his  gods,  his  priests,  and 
himself;  but  a  certain  disquiet,  of  curiosity  mingled 
with  a  deeper  sentiment,  shall  have  seized  him,  and 
shall  impel  him  irresistibly  to  that  book  again ;  he 
shall  feel  as  if  the  eye  of  a  specter  had  glanced  upon 
him,  and  stricken  him  with  a  fascination  that  compels 
him  to  follow  whether  he  will  or  not.  A  rising  sus- 
picion that  all  within  him  and  around  him  may  have 
been  wrong,  shall  be  aggravated  by  repeated  perusal 
to  full  conviction,  while  the  dawn  of  the  true  hght 
and  of  a  happier  state  is  breaking  on  the  night  of  his 
soul.  Communications  and  discussions  with  his  rela- 
tives and  neighbors  may  accompany  the  latter  part  of 
this  process,  and  his  finally  complete  persuasion  will 


124  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

be  followed  by  zealous  exertions  to  impart  what  he 
will  deem  the  greatest  good  on  earth.  The  vast  ma- 
jority will  obdurately  resist ;  but  within  a  year  he 
shall  find  one  or  two,  and  in  the  next  several  more, 
surrendering  to  the  same  convictions,  and  then,  as  it 
were  instinctively,  unfolding  their  new  faith  as  a  net 
for  proselytes.  Who  shall  presume  to  say  what  the 
consequence  may  not  be  in  fifty  or  in  thirty  years? 
Which  of  our  Christian  deriders  of  the  madness  of 
missionary  hopes  would  venture  to  pledge  his  fortune 
for  the  inviolateness,  half  a  century  hence,  of  those 
shrines  and  idols,  at  present  frequented  and  adored 
in  the  district  where  such  a  man  is  perhaps  at  this 
hour  beginning,  by  the  intrusion  of  the  supposed 
Bible,  to  be  disturbed  in  his  "unchangeable"  notions 
and  rites,  as  these  Christians  have  so  often  pronounced 
them  ? 

We  may  without  extravagance  suppose  these 
events  to  happen  in  a  great  number  of  instances  here 
and  there  in  that  realm  of  darkness,  and  we  might 
add  many  other  diminutive  incidents  and  agents. 
The  possible  effects  of  a  few  tracts,  conveyed  in  a 
manner  appearing  at  first  unaccountable,  to  a  great 
distance  from  the  place  where  they  may  have  been 
put  into  pagan  hands,  by  good  men  little  apprised  of 
the  dignified  appointment  with  which  those  humble 
gifts  left  their  own,  has  been  delightfully  exemphfied 
in  some  of  the  rather  recent  accounts  of  this  mission. 
Among  the  little  causes  thus  presented  to  the  iraagin- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  125 

ation  as  destined  to  produce  great  effects,  will  appear 
some  images  of  the  infantine  countenances  of  the 
pupils  now  taught,  and  hereafter  to  be  taught,  in 
those  numerous  schools  brought  into  existence  by  the 
mission,  not  indeed  contrived  for  proselytizing,  as  the 
immediate  purpose,  but  certain  to  contribute  to  it  in- 
directly in  the  course  of  years. 

You  are  glad  to  admit  how  reasonable,  how  sober 
it  is  to  expect  that  many  such  apparently  inconsider- 
able things  will  thus  grow  to  magnitude  in  the  prog- 
ress of  their  effects  contributary  to  the  success  of  the 
good  cause.  But  it  will  occur  to  you  that,  in  imagin- 
ing these  diminutive  causes,  we  have  not  begun  quite 
at  their  beginning.  It  is  a  pleasing  thing  to  see,  in 
the  hands  of  the  supposed  pagan,  the  book  or  tract 
which  may  thus  explode  his  superstition,  and  perhaps 
be  the  cause  of  ultimately  setting  his  temple  and 
idols  on  fire ;  but  how  is  that  formidable  substance 
to  come,  gratuitously,  into  his  hands  ?  Think  what 
must  have  preceded.  Think  of  the  complicated  proc- 
ess of  its  preparation,  involving  so  many  kinds  of 
workmanship.  And  this  brings  the  train  of  the 
operation  np  to  its  originating  matter  in  your  own 
hands,  a  commencement  so  long  antecedent  to  the 
pagan's  receiving  the  supposed  book,  the  event  from 
which  we  have  dated  such  pleasing  consequences, 
but  on  which  consequences  we  are  not  to  be  indulg- 
ing our  anticipative  gratulations,  as  if  the  book  were 
to  fall  from  the  sky.     The  little  cause,  then,  which 


126  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

we  may  follow  onward  in  thought  to  such  noble 
effects — see  it  deriving  itself  from  a  still  less — a  piece 
of  mone}'-,  which  may  have  carried  its  image  and  su- 
perscription, in  the  insignificance  of  ordinary  service, 
through  a  thousand  hands,  at  each  movement  very 
harmless  to  the  cause  of  evil,  till  it  has  come  into  that 
hand  which  has  devoted  it  to  produce  a  Bible,  which 
may  have  the  effect  at  length  of  a  thunderbolt  on  an 
idol's  temple.  Here  is  a  direct  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion, perhaps  querulously  asked,  What  can  loe  do  ? 

Should  it  be  said  that  such  fanciful  fictions,  even 
supposing  a  certainty  that  they  will  be  realized,  bring 
no  lively  incitement,  because,  the  contributions  being 
thrown  into  a  collective  sum  of  means,  no  one's  quota 
can  have  any  distinct  operation,  no  individual  can 
please  himself  with  the  idea  that  his  particular  con- 
tribution may  be  made  the  point  of  origination  of 
one  of  these  happy  trains — we  would  ask  whether  it 
may  not  be  honor  enough  for  the  individual  to  have 
his  share  in  originating  whatever  such  trains  of  prog- 
ressive good  shall  take  their  rise  from  the  collective 
contributions  of  all.  While  this  union  of  the  means 
so  contributed  makes  those  who  supply  them  sharers 
of  the  loss  in  all  those  Bibles,  those  little  books,  and 
those  cases  of  the  tuition  given  to  juvenile  heathens, 
which  shall  fail  of  producing  any  good,  it  makes  them 
participators  also  in  all  those  happy  and  noble  conse- 
quences, of  which  it  may  be  assumed  as  quite  certain 
that  here  and  there  one  of  the  Bibles,  one  of  the 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  12T 

tracts,  one  of  the  instructed  heathen  children,  will  be 
the  cause. 

This  confident  belief  that  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
enterprise  now  under  consideration  there  can  not  fail 
to  be  some  striking  instances  of  particular  and  appar- 
ently inconsiderable  means  thus  rendered  productive 
of  distinguished  effects,  and  those  effects  producing 
new  and  greater  ones,  in  a  continued  succession  en- 
larsrinof  as  it  advances — this  confidence  is  authorized 

CD         O 

(independently  of  all  other  reasons)  by  the  fact,  that 
such  instances  have  occurred  in  every  recorded  scheme 
of  Christian  enterprise  which  has  been  prosecuted  on 
a  wide  scale,  from  right  motives,  and  with  indefatiga- 
ble perseverance.  Not  that  in  all  of  them  there  have 
been  such  magnificent  and  prodigious  ultimate  effects 
from  little  causes  as  we  have  been  describinof ;  not 
that  in  every  province  of  benevolent  activity  a  rill 
from  some  little  obscure  source  has  swelled  into  a 
Nile,  and  fertilized  a  whole  region ;  but  in  all  of  them 
it  may  be  safely  asserted,  that  there  have  been  in- 
stances, of  a  magnitude  to  throw  contempt  on  frigid, 
indolent,  and  irreligious  calculation. 

FATALISM    MUST    BE    ABANDONED. 

It  is  not  improbable  the  chief  strength  of  what- 
ever reluctance  may  still  remain,  among  the  friends 
of  Christianity,  to  yield  their  full  co-operation  in  pro- 
jects for  sending  that  religion  to  supplant  the  delu- 
sion and  idolatry  of  the  heathen  world,  consists  in  a 


128  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

kind  of  religious  fatalism,  which  would  make  the 
objection  in  some  such  terms  as  these :  If  that  Being 
whose  power  is  almighty  has  willed  to  permit  on  earth 
the  protracted  existence  in  opposition  to  Him  of  this 
enormous  evil,  why  are  toe  called  upon  to  vex  and  ex- 
haust ourselves  in  a  petty  warfare  against  it — why 
any  more  than  to  attempt  the  extinction  of  a  vol- 
cano ?  If  it  were  His  will  that  it  should  be  overthrown, 
we  should  soon,  without  having  quitted  our  places 
and  our  quiet,  in  any  offensive  movement  toward  it, 
feel  the  earthquake  of  its  mighty  catastrophe  ;  and 
if  such  is  not  His  will,  then  we  should  plainly  be  put- 
ting ourselves  in  the  predicament  of  willing  something 
which  He  does  not  will,  and  making  exertions  which 
must  infallibly  prove  abortive. 

We  may  question  such  an  objector  as  to  the  real 
length  to  which  his  opinion  or  feeling  goes.  May  it 
approach  to  a  sentiment  like  this,  that,  the  thing  con- 
templated being  permitted  by  Him  that  is  infinitely 
good  and  powerful,  it  is  therefore  7iot  of  a  nature  hos- 
tile to  Him,  not  of  a  tendency  directly  the  reverse  of 
that  of  His  attributes,  7iot  of  deadly  malignity  to  His 
creatures  ;  that,  in  short,  the  brand  of  divine  repro- 
bation stamped  by  both  revelation  and  reason  upon 
idolatry,  and  on  each  of  its  deceits  and  depravities 
severally,  is  itself,  in  truth,  but  a  deceit  of  another 
kind,  a  mere  accommodation  to  a  certain  superficial 
and  conventional  theory,  the  real  fact  being,  after  all, 
that  God  is  at  peace  with  the  thing  thus  reprobated  ? 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  129 

We  may  presume  he  will  instantly  reply  in  the  neg- 
ative, and  say,  that  he  holds  this  mass  of  error  and 
turpitude  to  be  intrinsically  and  immutably  opposite 
to  the  divine  goodness  and  holiness,  and  pernicious  to 
man,  any  other  judgment  of  the  matter  being,  ac- 
cording to  all  fact  and  all  Scripture,  utterly  and  im- 
piously absurd,  and  that  therefore  the  divine  permis- 
sion of  this  great  evil  appears  at  every  step  of  thought 
but  the  more  mysterious. 

Well,  then,  we  may  immediately  say  to  him,  there 
are  two  views,  according  to  one  of  which  you  are  to 
form  your  scheme  of  conduct:  on  the  one  hand,  a 
mystery  in  the  divine  government,  a  permission  infi- 
nitely inexplicable  to  you ;  and  on  the  other,  the  most 
glaring  manifestation  of  the  quality  of  the  thing  so 
permitted,  as  hateful  in  itself  and  in  the  sight  of  God. 
Consider  from  which  of  these  two  it  is  the  most  ra- 
tional for  you  to  take  your  rule  of  action — from  that 
where  your  •understanding  is  utterly  lost,  or  from  that 
where  all  is  demonstration  or  self-evidence.  You 
have  light  given  you  on  the  nether  tract  where  you 
are  placed,  beneath  the  awful  mystery  in  the  heaven 
above,  which  interposes  darkness  between  you  and 
the  reasons  and  counsels  of  the  Almighty.  By  this 
light  you  have  an  infallible  manifestation  of  the  infinite- 
ly odious  nature  of  an  object  that  stands  before  you. 
What  can  this  light  and  this  manifestation  be  for,  but 
that  you  might  not  have  need  to  look  up  into  the  dark- 
ness for  an  authority,  from  reasons  unknown,  to  de- 
6^ 


130  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  J 

termine  your  sentiments  and  action  ?  And  is  it  ration- 
al, and  can  it  be  safe,  that  the  clear  evidence  which 
has  thus  been  aiven,  in  order  to  define  for  you  a  scheme 
of  duty  with  the  advantage  of  being  independent  of 
the  mystery,  should  be  rejected  that  you  may  revert 
to  that  very  mystery  for  a  determination  of  your 
duty — or  rather  for  an  authority  to  conclude  that  you 
have  none  ?  Or  would  you,  both  despising  this  light 
and  defying  that  darkness,  aspire  to  surmount  the 
region  of  mystery  itself,  ascend  into  the  light  around 
the  throne  of  Heaven,  and,  sharer  of  Sovereign  In- 
telligence, enter  into  God's  own  reasons  for  permit- 
ting the  evil  ?  For  this  indeed,  even  this  exaltation 
of  intellect,  must  be  attained  to  authorize  it  as  a  prin- 
ciple of  action  that  you  will  permit  a  great  moral 
evil  because  God  does  so.  For  you  to  maintain  a 
calm  tolerance  toward  it  because  He  does  not  destroy 
it,  is  no  less  than  to  yield  it  an  amicable  acquiescence, 
no  less,  therefore,  than  an  alliance  with  His  enemy, 
unless  this  tolerance  is  maintained  for  precisely  those 
reasons,  clearly  understood,  which  are  His  reasons  for 
permitting  it. 

But  perhaps  you  will  say,  that,  far  from  any  ten- 
dency to  such  an  alliance,  you  are,  as  an  indispensable 
part  and  proof  of  your  fidelity  to  God,  a  mortal  foe 
of  this  foe  to  Him,  in  every  estimate  of  your  judg- 
ment and  every  sentiment  of  your  heart;  and  that 
the  only  exemption  sought,  upon  the  plea  of  the  di- 
vine permission  of  the  evil,  is,  that  you  may  be  ex- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  131 

cused,  at  least  for  the  present,  from  active  measures, 
and  not  be  summoned  to  expend  and  waste  your 
feeble  strenajth  on  that  which  the  Almighty  strength 
spares. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  there  seems  to  be  a  ground- 
less assumption  implied  here,  namely,  the  continuance 
of  this  permission  indefinitely  into  futurity  ;  whereas, 
for  any  thing  that  can  be  known  to  you,  hostile  means 
put  in  action  at  this  period  may  coincide  with  a  divine 
decree  to  terminate  that  mysterious  sufferance ;  and 
then,  whatever  were  the  natural  inadequacy  of  those 
means,  they  would  seem  to  have  caught  the  fire  of 
Gideon's  lamps,  and  be  made  to  flame  out  with  super- 
natural power  of  rout  and  confusion  to  the  host  of 
pagan  gods. 

But,  in  the  next  place,  you  can  not  consistently  ac- 
knowledge that  the  circumstance  of  the  divine  permis- 
sion of  this  dreadful  system  of  delusion  aifords  no  par- 
ticle of  ground  for  conciliation  to  it,  but  leaves  you 
under  the  full  obligation  of  a  mortal  enmity — and  at 
the  same  time  claim  from  that  circumstance  an  ex- 
emption from  practical  efforts  against  it.  What,  in- 
deed, is  its  permission  but  simply  its  existence  ?  in 
virtue  of  which  there  can  be  no  exemption  from  the 
duty  of  attacking  it,  which  would  not  be  equally  an 
exemption  from  all  duty  whatever  in  the  form  of  op- 
position and  conflict,  which  would  not  confer  a  univer- 
sal inviolability  on  evil,  and  end  practically  in  the 
maxim,  that  the  more  evil  there  is  in  the  world,  the 


132  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

less  there  is  for  tlie  servants  of  God  to  do.  And  yet, 
you  are  saying,  their  feeling,  m  this  state  of  exemp- 
tion, should  be  the  same  as  if  they  had  a  great  deal 
to  do,  and  a  mighty  host  to  fight.  .  With  respect 
at  least  to  the  giant  evil  at  present  in  view,  they  may 
remain  in  inaction,  and  yet,  you  admit,  ought  to  glow 
with  the  actuating  principle.  But  then  of  what  use 
is  that  principle  except  to  disturb  tlieir  repose  ? 
That  they  should  be  inflamed,  as  you  acknowledge 
they  ought,  against  what  is  working  infinite  mischief 
and  misery  to  a  large  portion  of  the  human  race, 
and  yet  should  in  point  of  action  remain  at  peace 
with  it,  would  not  only  be  an  inconsistency  and  ab- 
surdity, but  would  also,  if  a  possible  case,  be  an  un- 
easy and  mortifying  one.  Vain  passion  of  Christian 
zeal !  illusory  and  almost  penal  fire  from  heaven  ! 
animatino'  the  heart  but  to  consume  it,  if  tliere  should 
be  no  practical  mode  and  machinery  for  conveying 
outward  its  energy  to  strike  against  the 'hated  object. 
To  have  the  mind  beset  and  filled,  as  by  main  force, 
with  the  revolting  images  of  pagan  abominations,  and 
to  know  that  this  infernal  usurpation  triumphs  in  the 
slavery  of  millions  of  our  common  family,  and  yet,  the 
while,  to  submit  to  be  unfurnished  with  expedients  of 
devout  revenge  ;  to  have  no  arrows,  no  power  of  throw- 
ing reflected  convergent  sunbeams,  no  missiles  charged 
with  the  elements  most  noxious  to  a  malignant  nature, 
would  be  felt  as  a  hard  imposition  by  a  man  of  zeal, 
who  would  dread  to  have  his  soul,  in  reference  to  the 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  133 

service  of  God;  in  the  condition  of  a  hero  in  chains. 
What  sliall  we  think,  then,  of  a  servant  of  God  desir- 
ing as  an  exemption  and  a  privilege  to  be  allowed  thus 
to  expend  away  the  vital  force  of  his  spirit  without 
action  ?  We  can  not  believe  that  he  has  any  of  that 
zealous  emotion  which  he  pretends.  No,  you  must 
not  profess  to  feel  and  fulfill  a  duty  of  enmit}^  in  spirit 
against  the  permitted  evil,  and  at  the  same  time  ac- 
knowledge no  duty  of  offensive  exertion.  The  true 
animosity  would  be  so  intent  on  some  means  of  action, 
that  it  is  quite  certain  the  state  of  feeling  which  per- 
suades to  decline  such  means  is  far  too  pacific  toward 
what  is  insulting  God  and  destroying  man. 

But  it  is  still  more  plainly  to  our  purpose,  as  against 
this  religious  fatalism,  to  allege  the  matter  of  fact,  that 
though  it  has  been  the  mysterious  will  of  the  Supreme 
Governor  to  permit  such  great  evils  in  the  earth,  it 
has  as  evidently  been  His  will  to  maintain  a  continual 
war  against  them.  Why  have  there  been  any  vindic- 
tive interpositions  of  His  among  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world  ?  Let  the  memorials  of  cities,  and  tribes,  and 
nations,  and  in  one  instance  a  world,  destroyed,  testify 
whether  He  has  set  men  the  example  of  peace  with 
irreligion  and  iniquity.  What  is  the  inscription  on  the 
monuments  of  beings  that  His  vengeance  has  smitten  ? 
What  has  been  the  interpretation  required  to  be  put 
on  all  the  formidable  signs  held  out  to  deter,  and  all 
the  plagues  that  have  followed  when  those  signs 
warned  in  vain  ?     The  victims  of  those  plagues,  and 


134  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

the  witnesses  of  their  mfliction,  could  not  say  that  the 
warnings  had  been  lying  signs  and  wonders,  as  pre- 
tending to  express  Heaven's  protest  against  the  evils 
to  which  the  will  of  man  had  been  permitted  to  aban- 
don him. 

And  if  we  contemplate  the  Divine  Being  as  a  re- 
vealer  of  truth  and  a  lawgiver,  the  same  hostile  char- 
acter and  design  are  conspicuous.  Every  thing  He 
declared  or  dictated  is  instantly  seen  to  be  adverse  to 
something  of  which  it  had  not  been  His  will  to  prevent 
the  existence  in  human  notions  or  conduct.  He  had 
suffered  these  things  to  come  into  the  world,  and  yet 
all  who  would  believe  and  obey  Him  must  oppose 
them.  Well  indeed  might  the  thoughtful  listeners  to 
His  voice  feel  an  alarming  sentiment  at  hearing  so  very 
many  things  recounted  for  them  to  be  committed  in 
deadly  strife  against,  but  what  would  have  been  the 
piety,  or  the  prudence,  or  the  consequence  of  a  re- 
monstrance to  Him  against  so  severe  a  vocation,  on  the 
plea  that  Himself  had  permitted,  and  could  have  pre- 
vented, every  thing  that  He  was  thus  imperatively  in- 
volving them  in  painful  conflict  with,  over  every  step 
of  ground  till  they  should  fall  into  the  grave  ? 

We  repeat,  that  the  whole  course  of  the  extraordi- 
nary divine  interference  among  men  has  been  in  the 
direction,  and  has  commanded  human  spirits,  on  their 
allegiance,  to  concur  in  the  direction,  which  we  are 
endeavoring  to  give  to  your  zeal.  In  visions  and  ora- 
cles sent  to  patriarchs,  in  dehverances  and  avenging 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  135 

judgments,  in  the  miraculous  suspensions  of  the  laws 
of  nature,  in  institutions  of  religion,  in  the  illuminations 
of  prophets  and  ar.ostles,  in  the  excitement  of  the  best 
men  to  the  most  invincible  pertinacity  of  warfare,  in 
the  mission  of  angels,  and,  transcendently  above  all, 
in  the  "  manifestation  of  the  Son  of  God  to  destroy 
the  works  of  the  devil ;"  in  all  these  forms  of  the 
divine  dispensation,  and  in  all  the  operation  that  has 
been  in  enlarging  progress  from  them  to  this  hour,  one 
spirit  breathes  one  perpetual  emanation  of  divine  will 
and  agency  against  that  which  will,  nevertheless,  be 
permitted  to  retain  an  existence,  but  with  lessening 
power,  on  the  earth  till  a  very  late  period,  when  the 
"  Lord  shall  consume  it  with  the  breath  of  His  mouth, 
and  destroy  it  with  the  brightness  of  His  coming." 
Such  lias  been  the  spirit  of  all  the  divine  intervention. 
The  sun  is  not  more  conspicuous  by  his  own  light, 
than  this  character  of  the  religious  economy. 

Now,  then,  for  a  professed  servant  of  God  to  refuse 
acting  in  conformity  to  this  entire  tendency  of  His 
cause,  and  to  justify  himself  on  the  ground  of  the  di- 
vine permission  of  that  which  the  cause  is  directed 
against,  what  is  it  but,  in  effect,  to  say  to  the  Supreme 
Governor,  I  behold  two  views  of  Thy  government : 
there  is  Thy  permission  of  an  awful  array  and  amount 
of  evils,  and  there  is  a  system  of  Thy  dispensations 
framed  to  work  in  most  direct  and  absolute  opposition 
to  them.  The  impossibility  of  apprehending  the  unity 
of  principle  of  these  opposed  parts  of  Thy  government 


136  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

throws  a  dark  mystery  on  the  one  of  them.  But  witli 
me,  unhke  my  fellow-mortals,  the  mystery  rests  on  the 
latter  view,  on  the  economy  constituted  for  resistance 
to  the  evil ;  whereas  the  reason  for  its  permission  is  so 
plain  to  me,  that  I  can,  in  dissent  from  all  Thy  faithful 
servants  since  the  world  began,  adopt  it  as  my  rule  of 
conduct.  In  pursuance  of  this  adoption,  I  dare  to 
believe  Thou  art,  in  truth,  not  so  much  the  enemy  of 
this  same  evil  as  is  pretended,  even  in  Thy  own  reve- 
lation ;  and  that  I  shall,  upon  a  certain  secret  under- 
standing, please  Thee  fully  as  well  by  declining  to  join 
in  an  attack  upon  it,  as  by  devoting  to  the  utmost  my 
active  forces  to  co-operate  against  it,  in  a  war  which 
I  do  at  the  same  time  perceive  cleai  ly  that  Thou  thy- 
self, for  what  reason  of  state  I  can  not  conjecture, 
hast  raised  and  maintained  with  a  palpable  and  con- 
tinual interference. 

Let  us  suppose  him  to  act  in  this  spirit  toward  his 
own  soul.  When  he  looks  there  he  sees  there  is  a 
proportion,  a  lamentable  one,  of  "that  abominable 
thing"  which  has  rendered  the  world  so  horrid  a 
scene.  But  the  Almighty  power  has  ^:>c;7?i<7?ff?  its 
existence  there.  What  then  ?  Can  he  on  that  ac- 
count remain  quiet,  while  it  is  poisoning  the  essence 
of  his  being,  and  feel  as  if  it  were  an  homage  to  God 
to  second,  if  we  may  so  express  it,  that  permission  ? 
With  plain,  sad  proof  of  the  very  active  quality  of  the 
malignant  infester,  which  seems  also  to  become,  even 
while  he  is  looking  at  it  (if  under  a  suspension  of  re- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  137 

sistance),  sensibly  stronger,  by  the  force  of  a  princi- 
ple of  augmentation  altogether  indefinite  if  left  to  its 
own  progress,  and  which  tells  him,  as  in  a  demon's 
accents,  that  his  soul  is  the  intended  victim,  can  he 
calmly  contemplate  this  permitted  state  and  operation, 
just  as  one  of  the  inexplicable  phenomena  of  the 
divine  government?  And  if  he  pretended  reveren- 
tial submission,  what  manner  of  god  could  he  deem 
himself  adoring,  that  would  be  pleased  with  such  a 
sacrifice  ?  My  brethren,  unless  his  pretensions  to  re- 
ligion are  false,  and  his  soul  is  actually  surrendering 
to  perdition,  he  will,  at  the  sight  of  this  mournful 
predicament  of  his  own  spirit,  be  ardently  intent  on 
an  application  of  the  means  of  resisting  the  destroyer. 
And  he  will  be  at  once  alarmed  and  indignant  if  he 
should  perceive  his  mind  admitting,  under  some  in- 
fluence of  the  consideration  that  God  has  not  pre- 
vented the  awful  fact  of  sin  within  him,  any  slighter 
estimate  of  the  required  energy  and  promptitude  of 
the  resistance,  than  that  which  should  be  commen- 
surate to  the  evil  itself,  viewed  absolutely  in  all  its 
atrocity  and  activity. 

But  now  let  him  revert  to  the  heathen  slaves  of 
darkness  and  sin.  If  it  would  be  cruelty  to  his  own 
soul  to  make  the  lighter  of  the  invasion,  or  the  means 
of  expulsion,  of  its  deadly  enemy,  because  God  has 
not  precluded  nor  exterminated  it,  he  may  be  remind- 
ed, and  all  the  friends  of  Christianity  may  be  remind- 
ed,  of  the   obligation   implied  in  the  second  great 


138  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

commandment,   "Thou    shalt   love   thy  neighbor  as 
thyself." 

Try  once  more  how  strongly  you  can  brhig  upon 
your  minds  the  reality  of  an  immense  multitude  of 
spirits,  of  your  own  nature,  existing  on  a  remote  con- 
tinent. You  can  by  thought  place  yourselves  as 
sensibly  amidst  the  countenances,  the  vital  warmth, 
the  talk,  the  worship,  the  infelicities  of  people  at  the 
distance  of  some  thousands  of  leagues,  reckoned 
through  the  air,  as  of  the  inhabitants  of  an  adjacent 
part  of  your  own  country.  With  as  absolute  a  sense 
of  fact  as  if  you  were  at  this  hour  in  India,  and  were 
just  now  descrying  a  tiger  crouching  to  spring  on  one 
ill-fated  person,  or  a  serpent  throwing  its  folds  round 
another,  you  can  behold  the  prodigiously  numerous 
tribe  of  souls,  actual  living,  immortal  essences,  images 
and  counterparts  of  your  own,  as  it  were  watched  for, 
fascinated,  sprung  upon,  grappled,  by  things  arisen 
in  fearful  eruption  from  the  bottomless  pit.  Look  at 
them  involved  in  the  power  of  the  Old  Serpent.  If 
we  might  enforce  the  representation  by  a  simile,  sup- 
pose the  case,  that  a  professedly  benevolent  man,  so- 
journing in  that  country,  happened  to  be  in  a  spot 
where  he  saw  a  tiger,  eyeing  with  deadly  glare  the 
intended  but  unapprehensive  victim,  or  a  serpent  in 
the  very  act  of  contracting  itself  to  dart  on  an  un- 
warned human  object;  and  suppose,  too,  that  this 
spectator  had  an  advantage  of  position  which  ex- 
empted him  from  danger,  and  also  tliat  he  had  in  his 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  139 

hands  the  most  efficient  means  for  striking  the  mon- 
ster with  death  or  sudden  fright,  or  that  at  the  very- 
least  he  could  alarm  the  person  in  peril.  Now,  what 
sort  of  philanthropist  shall  we  represent  if  we  next 
suppose  that  while  looking  at  this  creature  of  living 
flesh  and  blood,  who  is,  perhaps,  approaching  every 
instant  nearer  the  spot  where  death  is  lurking,  he 
coolly  thinks  what  a  hopeless  and  fearful  plight; 
wonders  that  the  God  of  nature  should  suffer,  or 
theologically  accounts  for  His  suffering,  beasts  of  prey 
and  serpents  in  a  world  made  for  man  ;  considers  that, 
at  any  rate,  as  God  does  suffer  them,  men  must,  of 
course,  be  devoured  by  them ;  and  so  quietly  awaits 
and  witnesses  the  catastrophe,  highly  self-complacent, 
perhaps,  in  the  sort  of  selfish  piety  with  which  he 
goes'  away  blessing  the  Providence  which  has  not 
doomed  him  to  be  the  victim. 

We  need  not  make  the  application.  We  will  only 
suoforest  whether,  since  the  whole  accountableness  for 
all  the  error  and  wickedness  of  paganism  must  rest 
somewhere,  the  alleviation  obtained  before  the  Su- 
preme Judge  by  the  heathens  who  have  been  denied 
the  means  of  deliverance  from  so  wretched  a  condi- 
tion, may  not  be  at  the  expense  of  those  who  shall 
have  refused  to  try  those  means  upon  them ;  and 
then  whether,  in  the  solemn  time  of  adjudgment, 
these  latter  will  dare  to  reflect  off  this  accountable- 
ness for  omission  on  the  Judo-e  himself,  in  the  allesfa- 
tion  that  the  evil  was  of  His  own  permission,  when 


140  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

they  will  have  the  consciousness  that  He  gave  them 
means  of  at  least  attempting  its  destruction. 

This  religious  fatalism,  from  the  dominion  of  which 
we  should  be  glad  to  see  the  active  powers  of  all 
good  men  rescued,  may  somewhat  change  its  tone ; 
still,  however,  aiming  to  elude  the  requisition  to  come 
forth  in  the  activity  of  the  cause.  It  may  affect  to 
recover  from  the  kind  of  hopeless  dead  prostration 
of  feeling  at  the  awful  fact  of  God's  permission  of  so 
dreadful  an  evil,  into  adoration  of  His  power  as  al- 
mighty to  destroy  it.  And  how  loftil}'-  God  shall  be 
extolled,  and  how  emphatically  man  shall  be  de- 
graded, when  it  is  hoped  that  some  absolution  from 
duty  may  be  suborned  from  the  contrast !  Feelings 
of  indolence,  combined  with  ideas  of  the  sovereignty 
of  God,  will  form  a  state  of  mind  prolific  of  such  re- 
flections as  these :  "  Of  what  consequence  can  be  the 
trivial  efforts  of  such  insignificant  creatures,  as  co- 
operating or  not  with  the  energy  of  an  Almighty 
power  ?  What  signify,  in  a  great  process  of  nature, 
some  few  rain-drops  or  dew-drops  the  more  or  the 
less  ?  What  are  we,  to  be  talking,  in  strains  of  idle 
pomp,  of  converting  the  people  of  half  a  world  ? 
How  reduced  to  contempt,  how  vanishing  from  per- 
ception, will  be  the  effects  of  all  our  petty  toils,  when 
mightier  powers  shall  come  into  action,  as  the  foot- 
steps of  insects  and  birds  are  effaced  and  lost  under 
the  trample  of  elephants.  Were  it  not  even  temerity 
to  affect  to  take  the  course  where  the  chariot  of  Om- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  141 

nipotence  is  to  drive,  as  if  we  would  intrude  to  share 
the  achievements  proper  to  a  God,  or  fancy  that 
somethinor  mao^nificent  which  He  has  to  do,  will  not 
be  done  unless  Ave  are  there  ?  No,  let  our  text  be,  as 
best  becomes  the  humility  of  mortals  and  sinners, 
'Be  still,  and  know  that  I  am  God.'  If  He  wills 
the  conversion  of  the  heathen  nations,  He  has  such 
powers  and  means  for  accomplishing  His  purpose  as 
may  well  allow  a  sabbath  to  the  hands  of  all  His 
servants,  while  their  souls  may  adore  Him  in  His  tri- 
umphs." Very  true ;  and  so,  in  the  literal  warfare 
referred  to  in  our  text,  there  were  means  of  over- 
throwing the  heathen  invaders  without  the  assistance 
of  the  people  of  Meroz,  or  any  other  people ;  for  the 
stars  in  their  courses  were  to  fiofht  ag^ainst  Sisera.  It 
was  not  because  He  needed  them  for  combatants  that 
the  God  of  armies  had  required  their  presence  in  the 
battle.  After  what  has  been  already  said  of  the  em- 
ployment of  feeble  means  to  produce  a  triumphantly 
disproportionate  effect,  it  is  superfluous  to  make  any 
other  answer  to  this  indolence,  or  indifference,  or 
pride,  or  all  of  them  together,  pleading  under  the 
semblance  of  piety,  than  an  admonitory  suggestion, 
that,  as  it  has  been  hitherto  God's  usual  method  to 
employ  human  instrumentality  in  His  great  works  of 
beneficence.  His  now  declining  to  do  so  would  but  be 
the  alarming  expression  of  His  judgment  that  the 
human  agents  now  are  not  worth  being  employed  on 
earth,  nor  being  translated  to  heaven.     One  should 


142  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

think  that  a  dread  of  the  fatal  privilege  of  exemption 
under  such  a  judgment  would  suppress  the  disposition 
to  seek,  and  the  willingness  to  accept,  an  exemption 
on  any  ground  whatever. 

The  religious  fatalism,  in  a  still  further  modiBca- 
tion,  will  make  professions  of  anticipating  with  great 
delight  the  certain  accomplishment  of  the  glorious 
revolution  in  question,  lohen  GocCs  selected  time  shall 
arrive.  Then,  too,  as  in  former  great  changes,  there 
will  be  noble  work,  and  enough  of  it,  for  such  hum- 
ble instruments  as  men  to  perform ;  meanwhile,  be- 
ware of  premature  attempts,  and  wait  for  the  signs 
that  the  time  is  come.  Language  like  this  has,  with- 
in the  memory  of  many  of  you,  been  among  the 
commonplaces  of  our  Christian  communities.  If 
there  be  still  some  cautious  Christians  who  are  re- 
luctant to  let  it  grow  obsolete,  we  might  ask  them 
vvhether  they  have  exactly  figured  in  their  minds  in 
what  manner  the  expected  grand  process  is  to  begin, 
or  what  appearances  they  could  accept  as  signs  that 
the  period  is  come  when  their  efforts  would  not  be 
like  a  vain  attempt  to  constrain  the  fulfillment  of  a 
divine  purpose  before  its  appointed  time.  Are  there 
to  be  extraordinary  meteors,  significantly  passing  east- 
ward as  they  vanish?  Are  they  to  hear  that  the 
temples  of  Seeva  are  sunk  suddenly  in  ruins  at  the 
stroke  of  thunder?  Or,  still  more  of  prodigy,  are 
all  the  chief  statesmen,  and  mercantile  men,  and  mil- 
itary men,  especially  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  the 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  143 

East,  to  become  with  one  accord  inspired  with  a  fer- 
vent zeal  for  the  Christianizing  of  Asia,  perhaps  im- 
pelled literally  to  a  spiritual  crusade  against  Hindoo 
idolatry  ? 

Perliaps  they  will,  after  all,  disclaim  the  expecta- 
tion of  any  extraordinary  signals  from  Heaven,  when 
it  occurs  to  them  that  they  are  in  danger  of  the  im- 
piety of  demanding  a  specific  change  in  God's  mode 
of  declaring  His  mind  to  men.  And  probably  they 
will  profess  that  they  wait  for  no  other  tokens  than 
such  as  might  afford  a  rational  presumption,  according 
to  the  rules  of  judgment  commonly  admitted  among 
wise  men.  Then  we  may  confidently  ask  why  they 
should  not  accept,  as  the  required  signs,  the  circum- 
stances that  have  attended,  thus  far,  this  Christian 
enterprise  in  India.  Is  it  to  be  taken  as  a  rebuke 
from  Heaven,  on  a  rash  anticipation  of  Heaven's  de- 
signs, that  our  missionaiies  have  been  kept  in  their 
positions  and  their  work  with  a  general  impunity  and 
freedom,  notwithstanding  that  during  many  years  of 
the  time  there  prevailed  against  them  a  systematic, 
unrelenting  hostility  of  spirit,  in  authorities  which  in 
all  human  appearance  might  have  crushed  them  in  a 
moment,  and  were  subject  to  no  "visible  cause  of  re- 
straint on  their  will — a  preservation  somewhat  re- 
sembling that  of  Daniel  in  the  lions'  den  ?  Or,  that 
the  comparatively  little  rancor,  and  the  very  consid- 
erable tavor  experienced  among  the  natives,  have 
seemed  to  betray  some  divine  coercion  put  upon  the 


144  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

lions  and  the  furies  of  direct  paganism  itself?  Or, 
that  they  have  been  uniformly  preserved  in  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  Christian  character  in  a  scene  pre- 
senting many  temptations  to  forfeit  the  distinction, 
and  while  bearing  the  moral  responsibility  of  an  un- 
dertaking in  which  that  forfeiture  would  have  been 
fatal  ?  Or,  that  by  the  miultiplicity  and  extent  of 
their  labors  and  attainments  they  are  constantly  re- 
calling to  our  imagination  the  hundred -handed  giant 
of  fable  ?  Or,  that  between  the  produce  of  their  own 
exertions  and  the  increasing  supplies  from  the  relig- 
ious public,  pecuniary  means  have  never  failed  for 
the  constantly  enlai-giiig  prosecution  of  the  design, 
even  a  very  great  disaster  having  operated  as  if  the 
fall  of  an  edifice  should  bring  a  large  treasure  of  gold 
to  light  ?^'  Or,  that  while  the  sacred  Scriptures  have 
been  spreading  with  astonishing  rapidity  among  the 
nations  of  the  East,  the  undertaking  which  has  given 
them  this  range  of  mischief  to  the  gods,  has  produced 
several  marked  good  effects  in  our  religious  societies 
at  home,  especially  in  the  point  of  helping  to  break  up, 
by  the  introduction  of  so  many  new  subjects  connected 
with  religion,  the  monotony  which  too  much  prevailed 
in  their  religious  services,  topics,  and  feelings  ? 

What  is  the  interpretation  which  our  soothsayers 
of  the  colder  climate  of  religious  feeling  put  upon 


*  Alluding  to  the  tire  which,  some  years  since,  reduced  to  ashes  the 
printing-office  nt  Serampore,  with  its  immense  literary  stores  and  other 
materials  lor  the  service  of  the  mission. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  145 

these  signs,  conjoined,  as  we  ai-e  gratified  to  view 
them  conjoined,  with  the  enhirging  missionary  exer- 
tions and  successes  of  our  brethren  of  other  rehgious 
denominations?  Or  will  they  pronounce  that  cir- 
cumstances like  these  are  no  signs,  and  sagely  observe 
to  us  that  in  the  great  concourse  of  casualties  it  is  at 
all  times  possible  enough  for  a  sanguine  spirit  to  find 
a  number  that  may  be  converted  into  intimations  that 
a  favorite  project  of  its  own  is  also  the  intention  of 
Heaven.  Wlien  they  have  said  this,  they  may  con- 
sider whether  they  should  not,  in  their  solicitous  and 
alarmed  veneration  for  Heaven's  appointment  of  times 
and  seasons,  abet  the  gods  and  their  priests  in  an 
appeal  to  the  Lord  of  the  world  against  these  mis- 
sionary intruders,  as  committing  impiety  against  Him 
in  having  **  come  to  torment  them  before  the  time." 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  a  number  of  the  persons  who 
have  believed  themselves  to  be  obeying  the  will  of 
the  Supreme  Authority  by  leaving  this  country  in 
prosecution  of  our  Society's  undertaking  in  Hindoo- 
stan,  to  die  in  the  service.  They  had  devoted  them- 
selves so  to  die,  and  rejoiced  in  the  confidence  that 
they  were  also  devoted  by  a  superior  decree.  In 
what  manner  may  we  believe  that  their  departing 
spirits  have  been  received  by  their  great  Master? 
Has  it  been  a  qualified  ''Well  done,  good  and  faith- 
ful servant,"  that  they  have  heard  ?  as  if  He  should 
say,  Feeble  in  judgment,  rash  in  temperament,  but 
honest  in  intention,  you  are  pardoned  through  a  pe- 
7 


146  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

culiar  extension  of  mercy,  and  are  admitted  now  to  a 
state  of  illumination,  in  which  you  may  cultivate  the 
humility  that  was  so  defective  on  earth,  and  see  in 
the  future  progress  of  your  Lord's  administration, 
how  long  His  servants  ought  to  have  repressed  the 
presumptuous  forwardness  of  their  zeal. 

No,  this  could  not  be  their  reception  in  a  world 
where  they  were  soon  to  be  joined  by  the  first-fruits 
of  that  very  zeal,  those  converts  from  idolatry  who, 
subsequently  to  some  of  their  teachers,  have  died  in 
the  faith  of  Christ,  and  carried  demonstrative  living 
proof  to  heaven,  that  the  true  religion  had  not  in  a 
premature  and  officious  zeal  been  conveyed  sooner 
than  the  divine  appointment  had  commissioned  it  to 
go,  sooner  than  the  divine  power  was  ready  to  ac- 
company it,  to  a  region  whither  some  of  its  professed 
friends  would  not  have  contributed  to  send  it.  And 
if  we  may  imagine  the  nature  of  the  emotion  in  the 
great  assembly  at  the  airival  of  these  spirits  from  the 
dominions  of  idolatry,  we  shall  not  believe  it  to  have 
been  the  melancholy  felicitation  which  should  welcome 
them  as  almost  solitary  exceptions  to  a  destiny  re- 
garded as  still  permanently  abiding  on  the  immense 
division  of  the  human  race  whence  they  came.  We 
can  not  conceive  of  an  unmingled  delight  in  receiving 
them  as  translated  thither  chiefly  to  exemplify  that 
sovereignty  of  God  which  He  will  manifest  in  every 
department  of  His  government,  by  suspending  in 
rare  instances  His  most  general  appointments,  as  two 


ORj  THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  147 

individuals  have  been  exempted  from  the  general  law 
of  mortality.  The  sentiment  without  which  the  joy- 
would  be  languid,  must  have  been  that  w^iich  should 
hail  tliem  as  signs  that  a  decreed  change  of  dispensa- 
tion, a  new  aspect  of  the  divine  sovereignty,  is  begin- 
ning to  shine  on  a  dark  hemisphere  of  the  world ; 
that  death  is  becoming  incomparably  more  tributary 
to  Heaven,  and  that  the  ancient  barrier  between  the 
realms  of  Asia  and  the  kingdom  of  eternal  glory  is 
beginning  to  break  down. 

This  indulgence  of  thought  in  representing  to  our- 
selves the  feehngs  experienced  in  an  invisible  and  su- 
perior world,  is  quite  within  the  just  range  of  our 
contemplation  of  the  subject.  It  is  a  noble  distinction 
of  religion,  that  (once  admitted  as  true)  it  affords  a 
rational  substance  to  bear  out  the  most  imaginative 
exercise  of  thought.  It  is  a  ground  on  which  our  ideal 
excursions  may  with  sober  propriety  go  such  a  length 
as  they  can  not  attempt  on  other  grounds  without  turn- 
ing into  poetry  or  into  vanity.  It  verifies  to  us  as 
a  reality,  a  solemn  relation  between  us  and  another 
economy  of  existence,  and  constitutes  a  vital  interme- 
dium through  which  we  have  the  sense  of  a  real  in- 
terest in  beings  and  a  state  beyond  the  sphere  of  this 
world.  Thus  religion,  believed  and  felt,  is  the  ampli- 
tude of  our  moral  nature.  And  how  wretched  an 
object  therefore  is  a  mind,  especially  of  thought,  sen- 
sibility, and  genius,  condemned  to  that  poverty  and 
insulation    which    infidelity    inflicts,    by    annihilating 


148  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

around  it  the  medium  of  a  sensible  interest  in  the 
existence,  the  emotions,  the  activities  of  a  higher 
order  of  beings !  Our  Lord  tells  us  of  great  and 
happy  intelligences  in  the  invisible  world,  who  re- 
joice over  a  sinner  when  he  repents.  It  is  quite  ra- 
tional, then,  to  have  indulged  our  imaginations  for  a 
moment  in  ideas 'of  the  reception,  in  that  scene,  of 
those  first  converts  from  paganism,  in  the  course  of 
our  mission,  who  have  been  followed  in  death  by 
some  of  the  persons  whose  labors  were  crowned  with 
this  success.  And  we  are  especially  warranted  in 
the  most  vivid  imagination  which  it  is  possible  to 
form  of  the  emotions  of  these  proclaimers  and  these 
converts  of  the  truth,  in  their  mutual  recognition, 
when  thus  reunited,  and  in  communion  with  the  pre- 
ceding behevers,  apostles,  and  confessors.  If  but  a 
comparatively  faint  apprehension  of  the  emphasis  of 
those  congratulations  could  be  brought,  by  some  mo- 
mentary illapse,  upon  the  souls  of  the  most  neutral  or 
even  the  most  hostile  spectators  of  the  attempt  which 
has  had  such  an  effect  in  the  happiest  society,  it 
would  instantly  turn  to  grief  at  the  thought  that 
those  heavenly  felicities  had  owed  none  of  that  rap- 
ture to  them. 

And  let  us  remind  those  professea  Christians, 
whose  coldness  toward  a  great  project  of  evangeliza- 
tion would  justify  itself  under  a  plea  of  reverently 
awaiting  the  disclosure  of  the  divine  purposes,  that 
by  their  profession  they  aspire  to  join  ere  long  that 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  149 

company  to  which  departed  missionaries  and  their 
converts  have  been  added.  It  may  be  the  destination 
of  some  of  tliem  to  leave  this  world  at  nearly  the 
time  appointed  for  the  removal  by  death  of  other  of 
these  indefatigable  laborers,  and  of  more  of  their 
proselytes.  In  the  reflections  which  may  be  excited 
by  such  an  idea,  will  there  be  no  sentiment  partaking 
of  apprehension  ?  No  mortifying  anticipation  arises 
at  the  thought  of  entering  the  other  world  in  company 
with  an  angelic  being,  the  different  rank. of  his  nature 
precluding  all  compaiison,  or  precluding  reproach  for 
the  difference,  if  comparison  were  made.  But  me- 
thinks  there  is  something  to  cause  great  displacency, 
and  even  a  dcQ-ree  of  intimidation,  in  the  thought  of 
approaching  the  most  illustrious  society  in  the  uni- 
verse in  the  company  of  spirits  of  our  own  nature 
and  our  own  times,  trained  under  nearly  similar  privi- 
leges and  instructions,  or  possibly  the  very  same,  but 
who  through  superior  zeal  shall  have  left  us  in  an 
immense  disparity.  Think  whether  it  be  impossible 
that,  even  on  the  passage  to  heaven,  thei*e  might  be 
an  unwelcome  sense  of  the  contrast  between  persons, 
who,  in  going  thither,  shall  be  finishing  a  course  of 
ardent  devotedness  to  their  divine  Lord,  in  exertions 
to  extend  His  kingdom  in  destruction  of  the  cruel 
reign  of  superstition,  made  with  a  degree  of  success 
attested  by  immortal  spirits  of  redeemed  heathens 
that  shall  have  preceded  them  to  the  sky,  and  others 
that  are  to  follow,  and  persons  who,  having  been  in 


150  THE    GLORY    OF    THE  AGE  ; 

circumstances  so  similar  to  theirs  in  the  introduction 
of  life,  and  having  professed  the  same  devotedness  to 
Christ,  shall  j-et  be  conscious  of  having  scarcely  made 
an  effort  in  aid  of  that  service,  of  having  scarcely 
perhaps  given  it  their  cordial  good  wishes  ;  conscious 
(may  we  not  surmise  in  some  instances  ?)  of  having 
hardly  been  sorry  that  the  comparatively  small  num- 
ber, as  yet,  of  conversions  from  heathenism,  should 
seem  to  afford  some  advantage  to  the  recusant  or  cav- 
iler.  May  not  the  thought  of  the  feelings  possible 
to  be  excited  at  such  a  time  by  such  a  contrast,  sug- 
gest to  Christians  whose  faculties  seem  more  readily 
applicable  to  the  exercise  of  finding  objections  to 
animated  schemes  of  Christian  experiment,  than  to 
that  of  devising  means  for  their  success,  a  new  topic 
for  solicitude  and  perhaps  for  prayer,  namely,  that 
they  may  be  permitted  to  enter  the  superior  state  in 
a  way  that  shall  not  immediately  bring  them  in  com- 
munication or  comparison  with  their  brethren  ascend- 
ing from  the  war  against  idolatry  ?  At  least,  in  order 
to  be  entirely  free  from  the  anticipation  of  any  reflec- 
tions, tending  to  throw  a  shade  over  the  joy  of  pass- 
ing into  the  great  Master's  presence  at  nearly  the 
same  time  as  those  devoted  spirits,  there  must  be  the 
testimony  of  conscience  that  in  some  other  manner  His 
service  is  zealously  prosecuted.  The  man  indifferent 
or  opposed  to  the  enterprise  in  which  these  men  are 
to  die,  but  who  yet  professes  to  take  an  interest  in  the 
advancement  of  religion  and  the  general  good,  can 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  151 

avoid  the  apprehensiveness  of  such  a  future  compar- 
ison only  by  having  evidence  to  himself  that,  though 
projects  which  seem  to  him  to  partake  somewhat  of 
enthusiasm  are  not  exactly  adapted  to  seize  his  mind, 
he  is  diligently  intent  on  promoting  the  cause  of  God 
in  plainer,  less  adventurous,  and  let  him  call  them,  if 
he  will,  soberer  methods.  But,  in  truth,  experience 
is  not  ill  favor  of  our  expecting  a  very  active  zeal  for 
extending  Christianity  in  any  method,  from  those  who 
recoil  from  missionary  projects  as  premature  and  en- 
thusiastic. 

For  ourselves,  my  brethren,  when  we  think  of 
those  who  are  thus  appointed  to  fall  in  the  immediate 
conflict  with  the  powers  of  paganism,  shall  we  not 
earnestly  desire  and  pray  that  we  may  be  so  animated 
to  promote  the  Christian  cause  in  every  practicable 
way,  that  we  may  never  have  reason  to  wish  these 
men  had  not  been  our  cotemporaries,  no  more  privi- 
leged than  ourselves  in  early  life  ;  or  that  there  would 
be  an  oblivion  of  this,  to  avert  any  pain  of  comparison 
when  they  and  we  shall  go  to  the  great  account. 

TRUE    IDEA    OF    DIVINE    SOVEREIGNTY. 

To  return,  but  for  one  moment,  to  the  repressive 
influence  on  some  good  men's  principles  of  action  and 
hope,  from  the  idea  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  divine 
appointments,  we  may  observe  that  the  most  assured 
belief  in  the  divine  decrees,  as  comprehending  all 
things,  has  not  necessarily  the  effect  of  paralyzing  the 


152  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  J 

active  powers.  There  is  no  denying  that  such  is  its 
tendency  in  cold,  inanimate,  indolent  spirits,  that  are 
really  indifferent  to  the  objects  demanding  their  ex- 
ertion. And  so  with  respect  to  any  doctrine  of  re- 
ligious or  moral  truth,  there  is  a  possible  state  of 
mind  which  is  apt  to  take  from  it  an  injurious  im- 
pression. But  let  there  be  an  earnest  interest  about 
the  objects  in  question,  and  then  the  zeal  and  activity 
will  be  incited  rather  than  repressed  by  the  faith  in 
all-comprehending  and  absolute  decrees.  Accordingly 
it  has  been,  we  think,  for  the  greater  proportion,  by 
decided  predestinarians,  that  the  most  ardent  and  ef- 
ficient exertions  of  religious  innovation  have  been 
made  upon  the  inveterate  evils  of  the  world.  That 
they  were  not  cliecked  and  chilled  by  this  article  of 
their  faith,  is  the  least  that  their  conduct  testified  of 
its  effect.  Not  only  were  they  not  withheld  from 
driving  impetuously  against  the  hated  thing  before 
them  by  any  surmise  whether  it  might  not,  for  the 
present,  be  guarded  invisibly  by  the  shield  of  a  de- 
cree. Not  only  did  they  dart  their  weapons,  when 
the  enemy  appeared  to  be  within  their  reach,  without 
being  stopped  by  any  suspicion  of  an  optical  decep- 
tion in  this  seeming  nearness,  this  possibility  of  strik- 
ing it.  This  is  only  supposing  them  not  to  be  tlie 
less  energetic  in  consequence  of  their  predestinarian 
faith  ;  it  is  what  they  might  be,  supposing  them  the 
while  to  forget  it.  But  it  was  not  as  forgetting  their 
principle,  and  being  actuated,  for  the  time,  solely  by 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  153 

the  independent  force  of  different  ones,  that  they  so 
nobly  exerted  themselves.  No !  they  acted  in  the 
full  recollection  of  it,  as  a  source  of  invigoration  no 
less  indispensable  than  for  Antceus  to  touch  the  earth. 
It  was  in  the  element  of  this  doctrine  of  decrees,  that 
they  felt  their  impetus  the  mightier,  their  ^Yeapous 
the  sharper,  their  aim  the  surer. 

And  while  their  opponents  in  belief  might  be  won- 
dering at  the  phenomenon  of  such  a  glow  of  life  and 
play  of  strength  in  an  element  which  they  had  been 
constantly  pronouncing  the  most  mephitic  in  the  whole 
world  of  opinion,  to  moral  energy,  the  persons  on  whom 
the  faith  had  this  influence  could  have  shown  how  ex- 
plicable and  how  far  from  absurd  was  such  a  practical 
effect,  in  the  case  of  men  in  the  prosecution  of  plans 
for  the  destruction  of  what  was  opposed  to  the  kingdom 
of  God.  The  first  consideration  in  the  matter  was  the 
trite  and  general  one :  they  were  certain  that  tlie  Al- 
mighty will  make  very  great  use  of  human  agents  in 
what  remains  of  the  course  of  His  dispensations  in 
this  Avorld,  Next,  whatever  concealment  may  rest 
on  the  precise  nature  of  His  more  special  determina- 
tions, which  constitute,  so  to  speak,  the  divisible  por- 
tions of  His  one  grand  design,  there  can  be  no 
question,  with  believers  in  revelation,  whether  that 
'grand  design  be  a  progressive  demolition  of  the 
dreadful  tyranny  of  evil  over  the  human  race. 
Now  tliat  was  what  tliey  were  intent  upon,  and  they 
were  putting  themselves  directly  into  His  hands  as 


154  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

willing  instruments  to  be  applied  to  that  use.  And 
was  it  not  (they  tliought)  most  reasonable  to  enter- 
tain a  general  assurance  that  willing  agents,  offered 
to  Him  for  a  purpose  which  He  is  determined  to  ac- 
complish, would  have  their  appointment  for  effective 
service  ?  If  so  many  would  be  required  that  even 
repugnant  or  undesigning  ones  would  be  made  to 
contribute  and  co-operate,  by  His  constraining  and 
overruling  Providence,  the  willing  and  zealous  ones 
might  in  all  reason  be  sure  of  being  put  to  such  a 
use.  The  disposition  itself  was  inspired,  they  thought, 
for  the  very  purpose  of  adapting  them,  and  the  adapt- 
ation given  with  the  intention  of  employing  them. 
Thus,  upon  the  certainty  of  their  coincidence  with 
God's  intention,  considered  generally,  they  founded 
and  justified  a  confidence  that  they  had  a  general  ap- 
pointment to  do  something  in  His  great -svork — an  ap- 
pointment, that  is  to  say,  to  promote  it  in  some  ivay  or 
other. 

But  no  man  who  is  powerfully  actuated  can  stop 
in  generals.  Those  devout  predestinarians,  those 
genuine  adorers  of  the  God  of  decrees,  were  earnestly 
attentive  to  the  manner  in  which  liis  general  and  com- 
prehensive design  was  seen,  in  His  revelation,  resolv- 
ing itself  into  defined  parts,  and  taking  the  form  of 
several  great  purposes,  distinguishable  from  one  an- 
other, while  all  combined  in  the  entire  design.  Of 
these  several  purposes,  thus  distinguished  and  an- 
nounced, there  was  probably  one  which  was  of  a  na- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OP    MISSIONS.  155 

ture  more  specially  to  interest  their  feelings,  and 
draw  to  this  particular  direction  the  zeal  and  co- 
operation which  weie  in  devoted  readiness  to  coincide 
with  the  divine  intentions  as  regarded  generally. 
And  when  they  felt  their  general  coincidence  of  spirit 
thus  determined  to  one  marked  division  of  the  divine 
plan,  they  acquired  a  still  more  animated  assurance 
of  their  appointment  to  a  practicable  and  successful 
service,  in  proportion  as  they  thus  came  more  dis- 
tinctly to  see  hoiu  they  might  co-operate  in  that  de- 
sign. 

Nor  was  this  all ;  for  when  they  thus  saw  one  par- 
ticular part  of  the  scheme  of  the  divine  intention 
manifested  with  considerable  definiteness,  they  felt  an 
irresistible  tendency  to  make  it  more  definite  still,  by 
resolving  this  too  into  particulars.  For  example ;  if 
revelation  has  declared  the  destruction  of  superstition 
to  be  one  leading  object  comprehended  in  the  great 
general  intention,  their  zeal  has  impelled  them  to  re- 
gard this  declaration  as  bearing  with  special  emphasis 
on  those  particular  forms  of  superstition  which  they 
were  most  intent  on  destroying.  Those  particular 
forms,  they  have  said,  so  eminently  hateful,  can  not 
but  be  very  marked  objects  of  the  exterminating  in- 
tention of  the  Supreme  Will.  It  has  seemed  to  these 
men  as  if  the  whole  force  of  the  general  decree  Avere 
converging  to  strike  just  where  they  wished  to  strike. 
And  as  the  principle  of  destruction  is  to  be  conveyed 
through  the  means  of  human  agents,  who  so  likely  to 


156  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

be  employed,  they  said,  as  we  that  are  already  on  fire 
to  desti-oy  ?  Beyond  all  doubt,  it  is  exactly  here  that 
we  have  our  decreed  and  unalterable  allotment.  Ex- 
actly here  it  is  that  our  will  and  the  supreme  Avill 
coalesce  to  a  purpose  which  defies  all  chance  and  all 
created  power. 

But  tlieir  assurance  that  their  intention,  as  fixed  on 
H  particular  selected  object,  was  decidedly  identical 
with  that  of  the  Almighty,  did  not  authorize  itself 
solel}'^  by  thus  giving  to  those  declarations,  which  ex- 
press the  divine  purpose  in  comprehensive  terms,  a 
more  determinate  bearing  on  a  special  object  for 
some  inspired  declarations  weie  found  which  were 
themselves  of  special  import.  They  evidently  pointed 
out,  by  their  own  terms,  with  much  definiteness,  cer- 
tain distinct  parts  and  special  processes  in  the  general 
scheme  which  Providence  will  execute.  These  ap- 
peared as  departments  or  sections  (if  we  may  so  ex- 
press it),  within  wider  divisions  of  operation  which  are 
still  themselves  but  parts  of  the  grand  scheme,  as, 
for  example,  the  foredoomed  destruction  of  the  pop- 
ish superstition,  though  a  thing  of  such  magnitude,  is 
only  a  portion  of  the  divine  plan  for  the  destruction  of 
superstition  in  general,  which  is  yet  but  a  part  of  the 
entire  scheme  announced  for  accomplishment.  The 
devout  men  who  have  sought  their  incitement  and  their 
strength  in  the  decrees  of  Heaven,  have  often  believed 
that  they  saw,  in  some  of  these  more  defined  and 
special  portions,  in  these  comparatively  distinct  repre- 


OR,  THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  157 

sentations  of  movements  which  are  to  fulfill  on  earth 
the  purposes  of  Heaven,  the  very  image  of  such  de- 
signs as  they  were  zealous  to  prosecute.  It  was  quite 
certain  at  least  that  those  appointed  operations  must 
at  any  rate  involve  such  as  they  were  projecting  or 
attempting,  and  the  predicted  success  of  the  whole 
must  be  the  success  of  the  included  parts. 

But,  they  said  again,  there  are  predestinated 
agents ;  and  who  still  so  likely  as  men  who  shall  be 
ready  with  their  life  and  their  death  for  precisely  that 
service?  The  inference  was  not  far  off;  these  very 
plans  and  proceedings  of  ours  are  decreed  as  portions 
of  the  sovereign  scheme ;  we  and  our  work  are  a  part 
of  eternal  destiny. 

We  are  not  here  called  upon  to  suggest  the  cau- 
tions against  the  possible  excesses  and  dangers  of 
this  confident  assurance,  in  good  men,  that  their  de- 
signs are  specifically  identical  with  the  divine  pur- 
poses. Our  object  was  to  shoAv  that  the  considera- 
tion of  sovereign  decrees,  which  cold,  unwilling 
minds  are  so  ready  to  allege  for  their  inertness,  and 
which  is  so  commonly  asserted  to  have  necessarily 
that  consequence,  nay,  on  the  contrary,  become  one 
of  the  mightiest  forces  for  action.  It  is  this  that  can 
make,  but  under  a  far  nobler  modification,  the 
man  that'  the  poets  have  delighted  to  feign,  who 
would  maintain  his  purpose  though  the  world  fell  in 
ruins  around  him.  A  missionary  against  the  pagan- 
ism of  the  Hindoos  may  feel  an  animation  specially 


158  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

appropriate  to  the  service,  in  this  assurance  that  his 
intention  is  the  intention  of  God.  Those  people  fortify 
themselves  in  the  notion,  or  the  pretense,  that  they 
are  immediately  actuated  by  some  deity,  and  there- 
fore fulfilling,  under  a  law  of  necessity,  his  determina- 
tions ;  the  missionary  will  feel  peculiar  invigoration  in 
advancing  to  the  assault  of  a  superstition  with  such  a 
principle  in  its  front,  in  the  force  of  a  principle  analo- 
gous in  form,  but  of  heavenly  essence.  Wliile  they 
will  have  it,  that  he  may  as  well  spare  the  eftuits  on 
them  which  it  were  his  more  proper  business  to  level 
at  the  gods,  if  he  could  reach  them,  the  eneigy  of 
his  soul  will  reply,  that  he  accepts  the  challenge  so 
made  for  those  enthroned  abominations,  for  that  he 
verily  believes  himself  and  his  confraternity  to  be  au 
Avatar  for  their  destruction. 

We  have  dwelt  too  long  on  this  topic  of  religious 
fatalism,  a  term  we  have  employed  to  signify  a  per- 
verted application,  in  reasoning  and  feeling,  of  the 
doctrine  which  acknowledges  God's  sovereign  and 
unalterable  predestination  of  events.  Our  excuse 
must  be,  that  these  reasonings  and  feelings  are  pecu- 
liarly apt  to  suggest  themselves  in  contravention  to 
such  claims  as  those  we  aie  at  present  wishing  to  ex- 
hibit. And  besides  their  own  direct  force,  they  lend 
strength  to  other  objections  and  repugnant  feelings 
not  arising  from  so  speculative  a  source.  The  mean- 
est of  the  passions,  that  can  make  an  opposition  to  a 
worthy  project,  or  withhold  from  it  the  necessary  aid. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  159 

are  very  ready  to  find  an  excuse,  a  justification,  or 
even  a  merit,  in  a  pretended  waiting  submission  to  the 
decrees  of  Heaven. 

OTHER    OBSTRUCTIONS    TO    MISSIONS. 

Many  causes  of  a  nature  not  impficated  with  these 
obscure  speculations,  are  operating  to  prevent  or 
lessen  the  assistance  to  an  enterprise  like  that  for 
which  we  are  pleading.     We  may  briefly  notice  one 

or  two. 

If  we  just  name  party  spirit,  it  is  not  in  order  to 
indulge  in  any  accusatory  complaints  that  our  particu- 
lar undertaking  has  materially  suffered  by  it.  Doubt- 
less we  may  be  somewhat  the  worse  for  it,  but  we 
have  as  little  the  inclination  as  the  means  for  calculat- 
ing how  much.  And  even  were  a  calculation  made 
and  verified  of  that  proportion  of  pecuniary  and  other 
modes  of  aid  which  a  perfect  Christian  liberality 
would  have  awarded  to  this  project,  and  which  party 
spirit  may  have  withheld  from  it,  we  should  still  be 
gratified  in  the  persuasion  that  the  greater  part  of 
what  may  have  been  so  averted  has  probably  been 
devoted  to  other  excellent  designs  to  which  we  wish 
all  possible  success.  The  history  of  this  portion  of 
the  general  Christian  operations  of  the  age  will  have 
little  to  say  of  convoys  intercepted  by  selfish  allies. 
We  are  too  confident  of  the  prolonged  favor  of  Provi- 
dence on  our  work,  and  too  much  pleased  at  seeing 
that  Providence  favoring  the  exertions   of  the  same 


160 

tendency  made  by  oilier  sects  of  the  C'niiblian  com- 
munity, to  regret  not  having  obtained  any  one  particle 
of  the  means  whicii  have  availed  to  good  in  their 
hands.  And  we  think  we  have  too  systematically 
avoided  giving  any  just  cause  of  jealous  reaction  to 
our  friends  of  the  other  denominations,  to  be  debarred 
in  modesty  from  denouncing,  with  unrestrained  cen- 
sure, the  spirit  whicli  can  not  see  the  merit  of  a  noble 
object  when  there  is  some  point  of  controversy  with 
its  promoters,  and  which  would  almost  rather  wish  it 
might  be  lost,  than  aid  them  to  attain  it ;  a  spirit 
which,  in  promoting  an  interest  professedly  as  wide  as 
the  world,  as  liberal  as  the  sun,  would  enviously  ac- 
count success,  or  the  means  of  success,  conferred  on 
a  different  class  of  laborers  in  the  same  general  cause, 
so  much  unjustly  subtracted  from  our  own  connec- 
tion and  project,  and  would  avenge  on  the  grand, 
catholic  object,  the  petty  offenses  of  party,  or  affronts 
to  individual  vanity. 

If  the  Christian  communities,  most  liable  to  feelings 
of  competition,  were  asked  in  what  character  they  con- 
ceive themselves  to  stand  the  most  prominently  for- 
ward before  the  world,  as  practically  verifying  the  ex- 
alted, beneficent,  expansive  spirit  of  their  religion,  it  is 
not  improbable  they  would  say,  it  is  as  conspirers  to 
extend  heavenly  light  and  liberty  over  the  heathen 
world.  But  if  so,  how  justly  we  may  urge  it  upon 
them  to  beware  of  d(!frradino;  this  the  most  mao-nificent 
form  ill  whicli  their  profession  is  displayed,  by  associ- 


161 

ating  with  it  littlenesses,  which  may  make  it  almost 
ridiculous.  Surely,  in  thus  going  forth  against  the 
powers  of  darkness,  they  would  not  be  found  stickling 
and  stipulating  that  the  grand  banner  of  the  cause 
should  be  surmounted  with  some  petty  label  of  a  par- 
ticular denomination.  Such  mortals,  had  they  been 
in  the  emigiation  from  Egypt,  would  have  been  inces- 
santly and  jealously  busy  about  the  relalive  proximi- 
ties of  the  tribes  to  the  cloudy  pillar.  A  shrewd,  ir- 
religious looker-on,  who  can  divert  himself  at  the  ex- 
pense of  all  our  sects,  and  despises  this  their  common 
object,  might  indulge  his  malicious  gayety  in  saying.  All 
this  bustling  activity  of  consultation,  and  oratory,  and 
subscription,  and  traveling,  is  to  go  to  the  account,  as 
you  will  have  it,  of  a  fervent  zeal  for  Christianity : 
what  a  large  share  of  this  costly  trouble  I  should  nev- 
ertheless be  sure  to  save  you,  if  I  could  just  apply  a 
quenching  substance  to  so  much  of  this  pious  heat  as 
consists  of  sectarian  ambition  and  rivalry. 

We  can  not  too  strongly  insist  again,  that  a  sense 
of  dignity  should  spurn  these  inglorious  competitions 
from  the  sections  of  the  advanced  camp  against  the 
grand  enemy.  Here,  at  all  events,  the  parties  should 
acknowledge  the  Truce  of  God.  If  they  have,  and 
must  have,  jealousies  too  sacred  to  be  extinguished, 
let  their  indulgence  be  reserved  for  occasions  and 
scenes  in  which  they  are  not  assuming  the  lofty  atti- 
tude of  a  war  ao^ainst  the  sjods.  But  the  o-reat  mat- 
ter,  after  all,  is  to  be  solemnly  intent  on  the  object 


162  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

itself,  on  the  good  to  be  done,  compared  with  which 
the  denomination  of  the  instrument  will  appear  a  cir- 
cumstance vastly  trivial.  Let  all  the  promoters  of 
these  good  works  be  in  this  state  of  mind,  and  then 
the  modes  in  which  the  evil  spirit  in  question  might 
display  itself  will  be  things  only  to  be  figured  in  the 
imagination,  or  sought  as  facts  in  the  history  of  for- 
mer and  worse  times.  For  then  we  shall  never  ac- 
tually see  a  disposition  to  discountenance  a  design  on 
account  of  its  originating  Avith  an  alien  sect,  rather 
than  to  favor  it  for  its  intrinsic  excellence ;  nor  an 
eager  insisting  on  points  of  precedence,  nor  a  sys- 
tematic practice  of  representing  the  operations  of  our 
own  sect  at  their  highest  amount  of  ability  and  ef- 
fect, and  those  of  another  at  their  lowest ;  nor  the 
studied  silence  of  vexed  jealousy,  which  is  thinking 
all  the  while  of  what  it  can  not  endure  the  name ; 
nor  that  labored  exaggeration  of  our  magnitude  and 
achievements,  which  most  plainly  tells  lohat  that  jeal- 
ousy is  thinking  of;  nor  that  manner  of  hearing  of 
marked  and  opportune  advantages  occurring  to  un- 
dertakings of  another  sect  which  betrays  that  a  story 
of  disasters  would  have  been  more  welcome ;  nor  un- 
derhand contrivances  for  assuming  the  envied  merit 
of  something  which  another  sect  has  accomplished 
and  never  boasted  of ;  nor  excitements  to  exertion 
expressly  on  the  ground  of  invidious  rivalry,  rather 
than  Christian  emulation ;  nor  casual  defects  of  court- 
esy interpreted  willfully  into  intentional  hostility,  just 


OR, 


163 


to  give  a  color  of  justice  to  actual  hostility  on  our 
part,  for  which  we  were  prepared,  and  but  watching 
for  a  pretext ;  nor  management  and  misrepresentation 
to  trepan  to  our  party  auxiliary  means  which  might 
have  been  intended  for  theirs. 

While  we  would  earnestly  admonish  all  the  pro- 
moters of  our  object  to  display  an  example  in  every 
point  the  reverse  of  such  tempers  and  expedients,  we 
will  assure  ourselves  of  the  favorable  dispositions  of 
Christians  in  general  toward  a  design  which  has  its 
own  sphere  of  operations,  in  which  it  has  both  tlie 
happiness  and  the  merit  of  interfering  with  no  other. 
It  has  not,  by  either  interference  or  ostentation,  given 
any  provocation  to  party  jealousy  ;  and  we  may  add, 
that  it  is  grown  to  a  strengh  and  an  estabhshment  be- 
yond the  power  of  that  unfriendly  spirit,  were  it  ex- 
cited, greatly  to  injure. 

When  we  mention  the  love  of  money,  as  another 
chief  prevention  of  the  required  assistance  to  our 
cause,  we  may  seem  to  be  naming  a  thing  not  more 
specifically  adverse  to  this  than  to  any  and  every 
other  beneficent  design.  A  second  thought,  however, 
may  suggest  to  you  a  certain  peculiarity  of  circum- 
stance in  the  resistance  of  this  bad  passion  to  the 
claims  of  a  scheme  for  converting  heathens.  By 
eminence  among  the  vices  which  may  prevail  where 
the  true  God  is  not  unknown,  this  of  covetousness  is 
denominated  in  the  Word  of  that  God,  idolatry.  Now 
as  it  is  peculiarly  against  idolatry  that  the  design  in 


161  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

question  is  aimed,  the  repugnance  shown  to  it  by 
covetousness  may  be  considered  as  on  the  principle  of 
an  identity  of  nature  with  its  enemy.  One  idolater 
seems  to  take  up  the  interest  of  all  idolaters,  as  if 
desirous  to  profit  by  the  warning,  that  if  Satan  be 
divided  against  himself,  his  kingdom  can  not  stand. 

Or,  rather,  it  is  instinctively  that  this  community 
of  interest  is  maintained,  and  without  being  fully 
aware ;  for  the  unhappy  mortal,  while  reading  or 
hearing  how  millions  of  people  adore  shapes  of  clay, 
or  wood,  or  stone,  or  metal,  of  silver  or  gold,  shall 
express  his  wonder  how  rational  creatures  can  be  so 
besotted ;  shall  raise  his  eyes  to  heaven  in  astonish- 
ment that  the  Almighty  should  permit  such  alienation 
of  understanding,  such  dominion  of  the  wicked  spirit: 
and  there  is  no  voice  to  speak  in  alarm  to  his  con- 
science. Thou  art  the  man  ! 

As  this  unhappy  man  may  very  possibly  be  a  fre- 
quenter of  our  religious  assemblies,  and  even  a  pre- 
tender to  personal  religion,  he  is  solicited,  in  the  name 
of  Jesus  Christ,  to  bring  forth  something  from  his 
store  in  aid  of  the  good  cause.  He  refuses,  perhaps ; 
or,  much  more  probably,  just  saves  the  appearance 
and  irksomeness  of  formally  doing  that,  by  contribu- 
ting what  is  immeasurably  below  all  fair  proportion 
to  his  means  ;  what  is  in  such  disproportion  to  them, 
that  a  general  standard  taken  from  it  would  reduce 
the  contributions  of  very  many  other  persons  to  a 
fraction  of  the  smallest  denomination  of  our  money, 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  165 

and  would  very  shortly  break  up  the  mechanism  of 
human  operation  for  prosecuting  a  generous  design, 
throwing  it  directly  on  Providence  and  miracle,  with 
a  benediction,  perhaps,  uttered  by  this  man  (for  he 
will  be  as  liberal  of  cant  as  parsimonious  of  gold),  on 
the  all-sufficiency  of  that  last  resource:  Yes,  God 
shall  have  the  glory  of  the  salvation  of  the  heathens, 
while  he  is  happy  to  have  secured  the  more  import- 
ant point — the  saving  of  his  money. 

How  much  it  were  to  be  wished  that  the  fatuity 
which  this  vice  inflicts  on  the  faculty  which  should 
judge  it  (herein  bearing  one  of  the  most  striking  char- 
acteristics of  idolatry),  did  not  disable  the  man  to  take 
an  honest  account  of  the  manner  in  Avhich  it  has  its 
strong  hold  on  his  mind.  If,  when  his  eyes  and 
thoughts  are  fixed  upon  this  pelf,  regarded  as  brought 
into  the  question  of  going  to  promote  the  worship  of 
God  in  Asia,  or  staying  to  be  itself  worshiped,  he 
could  clearly  feel  that  he  detains  it  from  fervent  af- 
fection to  it  as  an  absolute  good,  he  would  be  smitten 
with  horror  to  find  his  soul  making  such  an  object  its 
supreme  good — for  supreme  it  plainly  is,  when  thus 
preferred  to  the  cause  of  God,  and  therefore  to  God 
himself. 

But  perhaps  he  thinks  his  motive  regards  the  pros- 
pects of  his  family.  Perhaps  he  has  a  favorite  or  an 
only  son,  for  whom  he  destines,  with  the  rest  of  his 
treasure,  that  portion  which  God  is  demanding.  In 
due  time  that  son  will  be  put  in  possession  by  his  fa- 


166  THE    GLORV    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

thers  death,  and  will  be  so  much  the  richer  for  that 
portion.  That  this  wealth  will  remain  long  in  his 
hands,  a  prosperous  and  undiminished  possession,  may 
not  seem  very  probable,  when  we  recollect  what  has 
been  seen  of  the  heirs  of  misers.  But  let  us  suppose 
that  it  will,  and  suppose,  too,  that  this  son  will  be  a 
man  of  sensibility  and  deep  reflection.  Then,  his 
property  will  often  remind  him  of  his  departed  fa- 
ther. And  with  what  emotions  ?  This,  he  will  say  to 
himself,  was  my  father's  god.  He  did,  indeed,  think 
much  of  me,  and  of  securing  for  me  an  advantageous 
condition  in  life  ;  and  1  am  not  ungrateful  for  his 
cares.  He  professed  also  not  to  be  unconcerned  for 
the  interests  of  his  own  soul,  and  the  cause  of  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.  But  alas  1  it  presses  on  me 
with  irresistible  evidence,  that  the  love  of  money  had 
a  power  in  his  heart  predominant  over  all  other  inter- 
ests. It  can  not  be  effaced  from  my  memory  that  I 
have  often  observed  the  strong  marks  of  repugnance 
and  impatience,  an  ingenuity  of  evasion,  an  acuteness 
to  discover  or  invent  objections  to  the  matter  pro- 
posed to  him,  however  high  its  claims,  if  those  claims 
sought  to  touch  his  money,  which  he  contemplated, 
and  guarded,  and  augmented,  with  a  devoted ness  of 
soul  quite  religious.  But  whither  can  a  soul  be  gone 
that  had  such  a  religion  ?  Would  he  that  acquired, 
and  guarded  even  against  the  demands  of  God,  these 
possessions  for  me,  and  who  is  thinking  of  them  now 
as  certainly  as  I  am  thinking  of  them,  0  would  he, 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  167 

if  lie  could  speak  to  me  while  I  am  pleasing  myself 
that  they  are  mine,  tell  me  that  they  are  the  price  of 
my  father's  soul  ? 

If  the  rich  man  in  the  parable  (that  parable  being 
regaided  for  a  moment  as  literal  fact)  might  have 
been  permitted  to  send  a  message  to  his  relatives  on 
earth,  what  mio-ht  we  imagine  as  the  first  thino^  which 
the  anguish  of  his  spirit  would  have  uttered  in  such 
a  message  ?  "  Would  it  not  have  been  an  emphatic  ex- 
pression of  the  suffering  which  the  Avealth  he  had 
adored  inflicted  on  him  now,  as  if  it  ministered  inces- 
sant fuel  to  those  fires  ?  Would  he  not  have  breath- 
ed out  an  earnest  entreaty  that  it  might  not  remain  in 
that  entireness  in  which  it  has  been  his  idol ;  as  if  an 
alleviation  might  in  some  way  arise  from  its  being  in 
any  other  state  and  use  than  that  in  whicli  he  had 
sacrificed  his  soul  to  it  ?  Send  away  some  of  that 
accumulation ;  give  some  of  it  to  the  cause  of  God, 
if  He  will  accept  what  has  been  made  an  abomination 
by  being  put  in  His  stead.  Send  some  of  it  away,  if 
it  be  but  in  pity  to  him  of  whom  you  surely  can  not 
help  sometimes  thinking  while  you  are  enjoying  it. 
Can  you,  in  the  pleasures  and  the  pride  which  that 
wealth  may  impart,  escape  the  bitter  thought,  that  for 
every  gratification  which  it  administers  to  you,  it  in- 
flicts an  unutterable  pang  on  him  by  whose  death  it 
has  become  yours,  and  by  whose  perdition  it  is  so 
much. 

How  different  the  reflections  of  those  inheritors. 


168  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

■vvho  feel  in  what  they  do  not  possess  a  deligluful  re- 
cognition of  the  character  of  tlieir  departed  relatives ; 
who  feel  that  they  possess  so  much  the  less  than  they 
might  have  done,  because  those  relatives  have  alien- 
ated to  them  nothing  of  what  was  sacred  to  God,  and 
to  charity ;  and  who  can  comprehend  and  approve 
the  principle  of  that  calculation  of  their  pious  prede- 
cessors, which  accounted  it  even  one  of  the  best  pro- 
visions for  their  heirs  to  dedicate  a  portion  of  their 
property  to  God.  How  different,  therefore,  the  feel- 
ings of  a  descendant  of  such  a  person  as  that  late 
most  excellent  Christian  and  philanthropist  of  your 
city,  whose  name*  the  present  topic  has  probably  re- 
called to  the  minds  of  most  in  this  assembly. 

We  can  not  be  unaware  how  many  well-wishers  to 
our  cause  must  feel  a  severe  limitation  put  upon  their 
means  of  aiding  it  by  the  pressure  of  the  public 
burdens,  those  burdens  which  oppress  the  energy  and 
resources  of  every  scheme  for  doing  good.  How 
often  does  the  thought  of  such  designs  present  itself 
to  a  benevolent  man,  at  the  moment  of  his  being  ac- 
costed Avith  the  peremptory  demands  on  the  public 
account,  and  make  him  look  wishfully  and  regretfully 
at  the  sums  he  is  thus  surrendering,  to  be  speedily 
followed,  he  knows,  by  more  sums  surrendered  from 
the  profits  of  his  laborious  industry  or  the  produce 
of  his  little  property.  How  many  implements  for  the 
holy  war,   he  says  to  himself,  how  many  bibles,  or 

*  Reynolds. 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  169 

tracts,  or  school  manuals,  in  the  languages  of  Asia, 
might  have  sprung  from  such  sums ;  but  this  all-con- 
suming body  politic  seems  to  know  instinctively  what- 
ever o-ood  men  are  devising  of  gratuitous  service  to 
the  welfare  of  their  fellow-creatures,  and  to  take  a 
pleasure  in  frustrating  their  designs,  by  coming  upon 
their  means  as  a  spoil,  as  if  in  revenge  that  they 
should  seem  to  reproach  the  nation,  by  presuming  to 
apply  their  little  individual  means  to  worthier  pur- 
poses than  those  on' which  the  grand  public  resources 
have  been  expended  without  limit. 

It  is  indeed  a  melancholy  and  awful  view  that  is 
presented  to  our  contemplation.  A  great.  Christian 
state,  with  every  conceivable  mode  of  beneficence 
placed  within  its  sight  and  within  its  powers,  has, 
throughout  half  an  age,  been  stimulated  to  almost 
miraculous  exertions,  to  an  expenditure  surpassing  all 
the  dreams  of  the  golden  empires  of  romance,  a  con- 
sumption of  forces  and  of  materials  which  might  seem 
to  have  been  adequate,  under  some  imaginable  forms 
of  application,  to  give  a  new  character  to  the  moral 
world  ;  and  when,  after  all  this,  the  Christian  philan- 
thropist looks  on  the  scene  for  the  results,  he  finds 
that,  excepting  some  hopeful  commencements  made 
quite  apart  from  the  public  system,  and  in  spite  of  its 
insatiable  requisitions,  that  which  luas  to  be  done  re- 
mains still  to  be  done,  with  a  frightful  addition  of  evils 
to  the  account ;  and  to  be  done  by  the  efforts  of  in- 
dividuals, and  those  individuals  suffering,  from  the 
8 


170  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

course  of  national  aftairs,  a  lamentable  diminution  and 
alienation  of  their  means. 

In  any  large  assembly,  nevertheless,  there  may  be 
a  considerable  number  of  persons  who  have  mainly 
approved  that  public  course  of  things,  of  which  they 
would  plead  the  now  oppressive  consequences  in  ex- 
cuse for  contributing  but  slightly  in  aid  of  a  concern 
like  that  under  our  contemplation.  We  are  not  taking 
upon  us  to  arraign  them  for  such  approval,  when  we 
suggei^t  that  they  should  be  discreet  in  using  this 
plea.  They  should  think  again,  before  consequences 
whicli,  as  resulting  naturally  from  a  certain  order  of 
public  measures,  they  were  required  in  reason  to  fore- 
see, at  least  to  a  considerable  extent,  when  they  de- 
libei-ately  gave  their  approbation  to  those  measures, 
shall  be  alleged  by  them  in  exemption  from  assisting 
a  work  as  evidently  designed  to  promote  the  highest 
good  as  any  undertaking  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
If  they  have  been  the  professed  servants  of  that 
Prince  of  Peace  whose  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world, 
but  nevertheless  demands  tribute  from  the  worldly  re- 
sources of  its  subjects,  it  must  have  been  their  ac- 
knowledged primary  obligation  to  look  to  the  advance- 
ment of  that  kingdom,  as  indeed  they  were  admon- 
ished in  the  first  petition  of  the  prayer  dictated  to 
them  in  His  own  instructions.  This  sacred  obligation 
they  had  to  keep  in  memory,  while  considering  what 
other  expenditures  of  their  property  they  should  take 
the  responsibility  of   approving :    the    responsibility, 


OR,  THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  171 

we  say  ;  for,  to  abet  and  sanction  a  proceeding,  is  to 
incur  the  accountableness  as  completely  as  if  the 
manifestation  of  an  opposite  opinion  would  prevent 
that  proceeding ;  and  it  were  an  idle  evasion  to  plead 
that  the  course  of  measures  in  question  would  have 
been  pursued,  all  the  same,  though  disapprobation 
instead  of  coincidence  had  been  avowed  by  these  in- 
dividuals. With  this  obligation  resting  on  memory 
and  on  conscience,  they  could  not,  one  should  think, 
without  alarm  for  their  Christian  principles,  give  their 
sanction  to  what  must  inevitably  create  speedy  and 
large  demands  on  their  property,  unless  they  had  very 
solid  ground  for  assurance  of  being  left  still  compe- 
tent to  meet  the  claims  peculiarly  authoritative  on 
them  as  Christians.  They  had  to  consider  then  what, 
in  sober  calculation,  it  was  probable  or  possible  there 
should  at  length  be  spared  to  them,  by  the  voracity 
of  such  an  enormous  gulf  as  they  saw  swallowing  up, 
year  after  yeai-,  the  means  of  the  community.  We 
will  presume  that  they  did,  as  a  matter  of  conscience, 
solemnly  consider  this  question,  and  that  through  the 
progressive  stages  of  experience  they  were  still  satis- 
fied, as  remaining  constant  in  the  assurance  that  their 
approval  of  the  pohcy  which  caused  such  a  tremen- 
dous consumption,  did  not  involve  their  consent  to  an 
alienation  from  the  cause  of  Christ,  of  any  thing  hon- 
estly belonging  to  it.  But  then  we  must  tell  them, 
that  they  will  now  come  with  a  very  bad  grace  to  say 
that  they  have  been  deceived,  and  that  the  cause  of 


172  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

Christ  must  pay  tlie  forfeit  of  their  miscalculation. 
Surely  against  the  claims  of  a  service  to  which  their 
best  strength  was  put  under  the  prior  and  paramount 
obligation  acknowledged  by  their  profession,  they  will 
hesitate  to  plead  that  they  have  been  lamed  in  their 
wilHng  adherence  to  another,  of  such  widely  differ- 
ent character. 

To  those  who  are  not  liable  to  this  sort  of  argumen- 
tum  ad  homincm,  while  deploring  the  disability  inflict- 
ed by  the  consequences  of  national  conduct,  it  may  be 
susfirested  as  at  once  a  consolation  and  incitement,  that 
by  far  the  most  unequivocal  omen  of  an  amendment 
of  the  national  condition,  even  in  a  temporal  respect, 
is  the  very  circumstance  of  this  recently  arisen  zeal 
and  activity  for  extending  the  prevalence  of  the  true 
religion  in  the  world.  From  what  has  been  seen  thius 
far,  we  may  affirm,  that  the  Almighty  has  clearly  in- 
dicated this  as  the  part  of  the  world  from  which  He  is 
determined  to  draw  the  chi^f  human  means  of  accom- 
plishing His  most  glorious  designs  relatively  to  it  all ; 
that  here  He  has  His  mines,  and  His  assembling  camp, 
that  here  is  the  part  where  lie  the  sinews  of  the  holy 
war.  But  if  so,  and  if  that  war  is  to  be  on  so  great  a 
scale  as  appears  to  be  prefigured  in  the  visions  of  His 
prophets,  may  we  not  venture  to  say  that  He  will, 
that  He  must,  protect  the  stores  applicable  to  His  ap- 
proaching campaigns,  from  the  renewal  of  such  dread- 
ful depredations  as  we  liave  witnessed,  and  from  the 
unmitigated  continuance  of  such  as  are  suffered  now  ? 


OR, 


173 


We  may  assure  ourselves  that  He  will  in  due  time 
-warn  off  the  sacrilegious  hands  that  would  seek  to 
plunder  a  property  appointed  to  so  sacred  a  service. 
And  what  a  glorious  change  of  the  national  condition, 
when  God  shall,  as  it  were,  place  His  angel  between 
what  shall  remain  after  all  the  ravage  of  ambition, 
war,  and  corruption,  and  the  re-approach  of  these 
spoilers.  And  how  gratifying  to  behold,  too,  in  the 
contrasted  operations,  the  difference  of  the  power  of 
producing  an  effect ;  to  see  that,  whereas  an  astonish- 
ing and  unparalleled  expenditure  in  the  vulgar  kind  of 
war,  has  resulted  in — leaving  men,  relatively  to  the 
objects  of  that  war,  nearly  where  they  were — the 
grand  spiritual  power,  which  we  behold  entering  into 
action,  will  require  an  incalculably  less  portion  of  ma- 
terial means  for  its  consumption  in  an  operation  by 
which  it  is  to  transform  the  moral  world. 

You  will  not,  my  brethren,  feel  it  a  damp  upon  the 
pleasure  of  anticipating  this  rescue  from  the  spoilers, 
that  the  temporal  means  so  redeemed  w^ill  still  not  be 
held  in  entire  and  absolute  property  by  their  possess- 
ors, but  will  still  be  in  part  under  a  foreign  and  au- 
thoritative claim.  For,  besides,  that  it  is  pleasing  to 
devout  minds  to  hold  and  regard  all  things  as  belong- 
ing to  God,  and  as  to  subserve  whatever  purpose  He 
pleases,  they  may  be  very  confident  that  He  will  make 
it  to  be  the  better  for  the  community  itself,  in  a  tem- 
poral respect,  whenever  there  shall  prevail  in  it  a  dis- 
position to  apply  its  means  to  promote  His  cause.    In- 


174  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

deed,  this  very  spirit  will  involve  a  principle  of  counter- 
action to  all  such  things  as  we  have  seen  most  miser- 
ably destroying  the  temporal  welfare  of  the  nation. 

For  the  present,  while  many  friends  of  religion  are 
laboring  under  the  grievous  pressure,  we  may  suggest 
it  to  them  as  a  consideration  not  unfit  to  accompany 
that  prudence  with  which  their  conduct  is  to  be  left 
in  charoe,  that  the  offerinofs  to  God  from  what  calam- 
ity  has  left  have  a  peculiar  value  in  His  esteem,  and  in 
the  feelings  of  the  sufferer  may  contribute  to  exalt  ad- 
versity into  piety.  Should  we  go  back  in  thought  to 
that  period  of  the  Avorld  when  sacrifices,  literally,  were 
appointed  for  the  expression  of  homage  to  Heaven,  we 
might  imagine  the  case  of  a  devout  man  whose  corn- 
fields, or  plantations,  or  flocks,  had  for  the  gi-eater 
part  perished  by  some  destructive  visitation,  as  by 
tempests,  or  fire,  or  locusts,  or  disease.  Let  us  sup- 
pose him,  nevertheless,  in  looking  pensively  over  the 
scene,  to  consider  whether  yet  some  small  portion  of 
the  remainder  might  not  be  spared  for  God,  as  a  token 
of  humble  resignation  to  Him  that  gave  and  had  taken 
away.  Would  not  that  probably  be  the  most  accept- 
able sacrifice  that  had  ever  burned  on  his  altar,  and 
offered  with  the  most  affecting  emotions  of  religion  ? 
Nor  would  it  seem  to  him  to  lessen  what  was  alivady 
so  little,  but  rather  to  augment  it  in  value  by  bringing 
a  divine  benediction  upon  it.  Or  suppose  a  pious 
man,  in  that  ancient  time,  to  have  been  cast,  by  ship- 
wreck, alone,  on  a  desert  coast.     If  his  religion,  pre- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  175 

dominant  in  all  scenes  and  over  all  feelings,  inspired 
the  wish  to  make  a  bm-nt-ofFering  to  his  God,  his  only- 
means  might  have  been  a  little  provision  saved  from 
the  wreck,  and  fragments  of  his  ship  for  fuel.  But  in 
the  solemnity  of  bearing  toward  heaven  the  expression 
of  a  sublime  devotion,  this  v»ould  surpass  all  other 
sacrificial  flames  he  had  ever  kindled  or  beheld.  It 
might  appear  to  his  faith,  amidst  the  gloom  of  the 
solitary  shore,  as  a  symbol  of  that  presence  which  was 
in  the  fire  that  Moses  saw  in  the  desert. 

ENCOURAGEMENTS  TO  PERSEVERANCE. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  justly  thought,  that  the  notions, 
dispositions,  and  circumstances,  above  recounted  as 
adverse  to  the  spirit  for  Christianizing  the  heathens, 
and  as  causing  a  refusal  of  the  desired  assistance  to  an 
undertaking  which  is  with  that  design  in  actual  opera- 
tion among  them,  did  not  require  to  be  commented  on 
at  such  length.  We  gladly  leave  them  to  lose  their 
power  of  counteraction  under  the  progressive  ascend- 
ency of  unfettered  thinking,  experience,  benevolent 
zeal,  and  that  better  aspect  which  we  hope  that  a  good 
Providence  will  ere  long  give  to  the  times,  if  it  were 
only  for  the  purpose  of  replenishing  the  resources  of 
schemes  for  extending  the  dominion  of  divine  truth. 
We  shall  hasten  toward  a  conclusion,  by  briefly  sug- 
gesting a  few  ideas  tending  to  animate  the  piety  of 
persons  already  inclined  in  this  way  to  "  come  to  the 
help  of  the  Lord." 


176  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

And  surely  there  is  something  very  captivating  in 
such  an  expression  itself,  combined  with  numerous 
sentences  in  the  Bible,  less  bold  and  striking  in  phrase, 
but  of  the  same  spirit.  It  is  strange  that  we  are  not 
oftener  surprised  and  delighted  at  the  condescension 
shown  by  the  Almighty,  in  expressing  the  dictates 
of  His  will  to  His  servants  in  terms  and  images  which 
permit  them  to  regard  the  performance  of  their  duty, 
their  mere  duty,  in  the  light  of  co-operation  with 
Him.  The  thought  of  being  authorized  by  Him  to 
entertain  so  sublime  an  idea  of  their  vocation,  might 
bear  them  up  in  their  deepest  distresses  and  severest 
labors ;  mij^ht  animate  them,  thouo-h  a  world  were 
against  them.  So  ennobled  a  character  of  their  serv- 
ice, however,  which  it  would  have  been  profaneness 
for  them  to  have  arrogated  without  such  a  sanction, 
is  fit  to  be  dwelt  upon  in  its  full  magnitude  only  when 
their  minds  are  the  most  elevated  in  devotion,  when 
consequently  their  humility  is  the  most  profound.  In 
the  usual  tenor  of  their  religious  feelings,  it  should  be 
honor  enough  to  inspire  complacency  and  activity  in 
their  work,  that  they  can  regard  themselves  in  the 
humbler  capacity  of  instruments  ;  that  the  Supreme 
Agent  chooses  to  effect  by  means  of  them,  what  He 
could  accomplish  with  infinite  facility  without  them. 

Apply  the  consideration  to  the  matter  now  before 
us.  He  could  by  a  mere  act  of  His  will  cause  an 
instantaneous  disappearance  from  the  globe  of  that 
enormous  system  of  mythological  delusion,  with  all 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  177 

its  rites,  iniquities,  and  guardian  evil  spirits.  It  might 
vanish  hke  a  vapor  of  the  morning,  and  leave  but  its 
wreck  and  monument  in  fallen  temples  and  shivered 
idols,  thenceforth  a  harmless  mass  of  matter,  dispos- 
sessed of  that  property  which  had  breathed  poison 
into  men's  souls.  And,  indeed,  if  we  were.regarding 
the  extermination  of  that  monstrous  superstition  in 
no  other  view  than  that  of  the  advantage  of  its  being 
the  soonest  out  of  existence,  we  might  almost  be 
t<3mpted  to  desire  so  illustrious  a  catastrophe.  If 
such  a  thing  might  be,  a  servant  of  God  would  be 
willing  to  forego  the  honor  of  his  share  in  the  de- 
struction. But  when  he  finds  it  so  evident  that,  in 
the  divine  plans,  it  is  not  the  sole  object  to  attain  the 
one  last  effect,  but  that  they  are  condescendingly 
formed  in  such  a  manner  that  their  execution  shall  be 
an  employment,  a  discipline,  and  an  honor  to  human 
agents,  he  will  feel  (if  his  spirit  is  attempered  to  the 
great  purposes  of  his  Master)  a  generous  impatience 
that  these  agents  may  be  prompt  to  seize  the  honor 
thus  brought  within  their  reach.  With  firebrands 
and  torches  put  into  their  hands,  can  they  be  content, 
he  exclaims,  to  stand  still  and  let  them  burn  out,  while 
the  huge  fabric  inhabited  by  demon  gods,  and  filled 
with  pestilent  abominations,  spreads  wide  and  towers 
aloft  in  pride  and  security  before  them  ?  Let  them 
advance  and  prove  who  has  sent  them,  and  whence 
the  fire  came  that  they  bear.  Let  them  go  and  de- 
monstrate upon  the  proud  assemblage  of  possessors 


178  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

of  a  region  not  tlieir  own  that  the  decree  of  expulsion 
coraing  upon  them  at  last  is  not  to  be  defied  because 
He,  whose  own  approach  when  on  earth  was  always 
the  imperative  signal  for  infernal  audacity  to  retire, 
seems  now  only  to  send  His  servants  to  execute  His 
will.  That  His  will  should  pass  into  effect  through 
such  an  agency,  may  well  excite  the  wonder  of  those 
who  find  such  a  commission  offered  to  them.  It 
must  be  the  highest  distinction  which  He  has  to  confer 
on  mortals,  thus  to  summon  them  forth,  in  the  sight 
of  far  nobler,  mightier  intelligences,  to  so  great  a 
work  for  the  enlargement  of  His  kingdom.  It  will 
also  be  a  religious  triumph  as  against  the  principalities 
and  powers  of  evil,  that  it  should  please  Him  to  ac- 
complish His  victory  by  the  means  of  creatures  who, 
in  thus  serving  their  God,  should  be  avenging  their 
race ;  that  these  powers  should  see,  that  when  the 
irresistible  might  was  at  last  to  be  put  forth,  it  was  to 
be  through  the  instrumentality  of  beings  of  that 
order  which  they  had  so  long  despised,  and  tyran- 
nized over,  and  tormented. 

It  is  still  further  cause  of  delight,  that  this  putting 
forth  of  strength  under  the  external  form  of  weak- 
ness, is  analogous  to  the  one  greatest  manifestation 
of  vindicating  and  redeeming  energy. 

As  incitement  to  Christians  to  throw  a  measure  of 
their  activity  into  enterprises  aimed  at  such  an  object, 
they  may  be  reminded  that,  while  enjoined  to  pre- 
serve moderation  in  their  own   demands   upon   this 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  179 

earth,  they  are  entitled  to  be  ambitious,  shall  we  not 
say  arrogant,  on  behalf  of  their  Lord.  In  their  view, 
the  worst  usurpation  beyond  all  comparison,  in  the 
world,  must  be  that  which  any  where  presumes  to 
withhold  an  inhabited  tract  from  His  actual  dominion. 
On  whatever  it  is  that  does  so  presume,  let  them  ex- 
pend the  animosity  which  might  otherwise  find  its 
meaner  exercise  against  the  boundaries  that  obstruct 
their  own  projects  of  acquisition.  And  in  this  nobler 
direction  it  will  not  be  the  passion  which  frets  itself 
against  what  is  unalterable,  and  despairs.  For  they 
have  reason  to  be  assured  that  those  limits,  against 
which  this  more  consecrated  ambition  is  impelled  in 
hostility,  will  at  length  be  carried  away.  They  can 
descry  through  the  gross  darkness  that  covers  the 
pagan  regions,  a  mystical  signature  by  the  finger  of 
God,  on  every  spot,  to  indicate  its  assignment  by  that 
covenant,  which  has  given  to  the  Messiah  the  heathen 
for  His  inheritance,  and  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth  for  His  possession.  That  declared  decree  in 
heaven,  that  substance  of  the  thing  hoped  for,  is 
brought  down  to  the  earth  in  the  confident  anticipa- 
tions of  the  faithful,  and  beheld  as  in  the  fact  of  a 
universal  kingdom. 

They  see  among  leading  mortals  an  ardent  compe- 
tition for  dominion  over  spaces  of  territory,  with  angry 
controversy  about  titles  and  usurpations,  and  an  inces- 
sant resort  to  the  expedient  which  wastes  the  con- 
tenders and  the  subject  of  contention.     They  loathe 


180  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

and  abhor  this  spectacle  of  a  world  with  its  unnum- 
bered myriads,  continually  made  a  sport  and  a  prey 
of  the  bad  passions  of  those  predominant  mortals, 
by  their  power  of  exasperating  and  directing  the  bad 
propensities  of  subservient  multitudes.  The  contem- 
plators  of  the  scene,  if  they  believed  it  must  be  al- 
ways thus,  might  well  be  affected  with  passionate 
longings  for  omens  of  its  approaching  dissolution.  An 
oracle  that  should  tell  them,  in  the  plainest  meaning 
of  the  words,  that  "the  end  of  all  things  is  at  hand," 
might  delight  them  more  than  ever  a  pagan  mover  of 
an  ambitious  enterprise  was  elated  by  voices  or  signs 
from  the  fane  of  his  deity  assuring  him  of  conquest. 
But  they  have  a  better  consolation  in  the  faith,  that 
amidst  all  these  tumults  of  conflict,  amidst  all  these 
destructive  competitions  of  transitory  potentates,  there 
is  gradually  unfolding  itself  a  cause  destined  to  grow 
to  a  dominion  which  will  leave  no  province  nor  tribe 
of  the  earth  to  be  contested  by  the  rivalries  of  an  in- 
sane ambition. 

In  the  mean  time,  if  they  observe  any  state  making 
a  great  progress  in  power  and  occupancy  on  the  face 
of  the  Avorld,  it  will  well  become  their  character  to 
show  an  animated  concern  that  the  kingdom  which  has 
their  peculiar  allegiance  may  be  as  evidently  advanc- 
ing, and  that  to  this  progress  that  enlargement  of  the 
temporal  dominion  may  be  made  in  some  way  to  sub- 
serve. And  here  you  will  all  be  reminded  of  the 
wonderfully  rapid  extension  of  the  British  acquisitions 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  181 

in  Asia,  where  we  can  not  help  interpreting  it  in  favor 
of  a  higher  cause,  that  a  lying  spirit  should  have  be- 
trayed so  many  pagan  and  Mahommedan  powers  to 
provoke  their  own  destruction.  We  can,  in  this  view 
of  such  vast  conquests,  thank  the  contrivers  and  the 
heroes,  whose  contempt  would  at  any  stage  of  the  ca- 
reer have  been  excited  at  the  notion  of  its  having  been 
the  real  cause  of  their  success,  that  they  were  prepar- 
ing the  way  for  Christianity. 

It  is  of  course  for  men  of  counsel  and  of  war  to 
scorn  this  fanatical  mode  of  estimating  splendid  con- 
quests. But  we  can  see  little  on  any  other  ground  to 
console  good  men  for  the  hea\y  addition  made  by 
conquests  so  splendid,  to  those  public  burdens  which 
leave  them  such  scanty  means  of  doing  good  of  their 
own  choice  and  in  their  own  manner.  Should  nation- 
al glory  be  talked  of,  we  could  have  no  fear  of  making 
the  appeal  to  every  one  within  hearing,  whether  he, 
as  an  individual  of  the  nation,  and  one  of  the  owners 
therefore  of  the  glory  of  these  Eastern  acquisitions, 
would  not  most  willingly  surrender  his  share  of  it  on 
the  terms  of  receiving  back,  were  that  possible,  so 
much  as  it  may  fairly  be  calculated  to  have  cost  him, 
with  the  addition  of  so  much  as  it  is  yet  to  cost. 
Especially  this  would  be  a  safe  appeal  to  a  man  who 
is  thinking  what  a  valuable  contribution  that  sum 
would  be  to  projects  for  diffusing  Christianity  through 
that  part  of  the  world.  It  has  not  been  left  him  for 
any  such  disposal.     But  still,  let  him  hope  in  Divine 


182  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE; 

Providence,  that  even  to  that  object  it  has  not  been 
altogether  lost.  And  here  is  a  project  which  seeks 
to  redeem  to  this  very  purpose  what  has  been  taken 
and  expended  in  a  spirit  infinitely  foreign  to  it,  and 
what,  unless  so  redeemed,  may  be  justly  accounted, 
for  the  greater  portion  of  it,  lost  in  the  most  absolute 
sense.  But  this  enterprise  too  is  a  concern  of  serious 
expense.  The  advocates  of  this  design  have  no  way 
of  avoiding  the  confession  that  it  seeks  to  impose  a 
little  more  cost  for  India  on  persons  to  whom  that 
country  has,  independently  of  their  will,  cost  too  much 
already  ;  but  it  is  an  addition  somewhat  of  the  nature 
of  an  insurance  for  Christianity  on  the  ultimate  etfect 
of  the  large  expenditure  past  and  to  come.  It  is  like 
something  to  be  thrown  into  the  water,  to  cause  that 
miraculously  to  float  which  were  else  irrecoverably 
sunk. 

The  object  is,  that  the  true  religion  may  advance 
upon  the  track  of  our  victorious  armies,  may  plant 
stations  on  the  fields  of  their  encampments  and  bat- 
tles, may  demolish,  in  the  moral  sense,  as  many 
strongholds  of  superstition  as  our  artillery  has  reduced 
fortresses  ;  may,  in  short,  carry  on  operations  corre- 
sponding to  the  wars  in  all  the  points  esteemed  the 
most  glorious.  And  what  a  delightful  thing,  if  thus 
a  power  never  thought  of  by  either  of  the  parties  in 
the  long  conflict,  shall  come  in  and  take  the  best  of 
the  spoils,  and  assume,  in  a  better  sense,  the  dominion 
which  so  many  potentates  have  been  compelled  to 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  183 

resign,'  showing  the  one  people  how  they  had,  in 
truth,  been  beguiled  through  expenditure  and  exer- 
tion, for  an  object  for  which  they  would  have  scorned 
to  make,  knowingly,  a  thousandth  part  of  such  a 
sacri^ce ;  and  the  other,  that  their  political  independ- 
ence was  lost  but  in  order  that  a  conquest  over  all 
their  gods  might  be  gained.  But  how  is  a  design 
which  looks  to  such  consequences  to  be  supported  in 
the  prosecution  ?  It  is  evident  there  is  no  way  but 
that  in  which  the  friends  of  religion  may,  if  they  will, 
decline  to  afford  their  aid. 

Among  the  many  reasons  why  we  think  they 
should  not  so  decline,  we  may  suggest  the  certainty 
that  all  contributions  will  be  applied  in  a  manner  to 
produce  the  greatest  possible  effect.  One  of  the 
most  conspicuous  and  uncontested  of  the  merits  of 
the  undertaking  has  been  the  economy  of  expenditure 
throughout  the  whole  system.  The  statements  of 
what  has  resulted,  in  a  substantial  form,  besides  an 
immensity  of  such  exertions  as  can  not  be  brought 
into  formal  account,  give  evidence  that  all  who  have 
been  concerned  in  expending  have  had  a  conscientious 
regard  to  the  object.  As  to  the  missionaries  them- 
selves, it  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  -gjronger  pledge 
for  the  careful  application  of  the  whole  resources, 
than  the  fact  of  their  having  many  years  generously 
devoted  the  produce  of  their  own  indefatigable  labors. 
This  warfare,  therefore,  in  Hindoostan,  is  in  no  dan- 
ger of  incurring  a  charge  which  has  been  constantly 


184  THE    GLORY    OF   THE    AGE  ; 

and  heavily  laid  on  the  conduct  of  our  other  wai-s 
there.  We  may  be  assured  that  all  the  supplies  af- 
forded to  this  service  will  go  into  the  efifective  appa- 
ratus, and  will  be  felt  in  the  enemy*s  camp.  It  is 
gratifying  to  a  contributor  to  feel  confident  that  .what 
goes  from  his  hand  as  a  real  and  sensible  diminution 
of  what  was  his  own,  will  not  be  as  if  annihilated  or 
thrown  into  the  sea,  but  will  be  really  efficient,  in  its 
measure,  in  the  distant  service  for  which  it  is  surren- 
dered. 

While  we  pay  the  tribute  of  our  admiration  and 
gratitude  to  the  devotedness,  the  disinterestedness, 
and  the  astonishing  performances  of  the  fraternity  at 
Serampore,  we  can  not  help  being  reminded  that  the 
chief  of  these  laborers  are  advanced  in  life,  and  the 
leader  of  the  whole  band  verging  fast,  in  point  of  age, 
to  the  decline.  We  will  not  dwell  on  the  irreparable 
loss  which  the  cause  sustained  by  them  with  so  noble 
an  energy  is  one  day  to  suffer.  But  it  does  seem 
highly  desirable  that  the  remaining  portion  of  the 
lives  of  these  veterans  should  be  turned  to  the  utmost 
account.  For  one  thing,  a  few  spirits  so  long  and  se- 
verely disciplined,  who  have  mastered  so  much  diffi- 
culty, that  nothing  which  can  remain  appears  at  all 
formidable  to  them,  and  who  habitually,  and  now  as 
it  were  mechanically,  labor  at  the  extreme  pitch  of 
their  laboring  power,  and  that  power  indefinitely  in- 
creased by  practice,  a  few  such  men,  and  those  also 
acting  in  concert,  are  to  be  estimated  at  perhaps  ten- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  185 

fold  their  numerical  force,  even  considered  in  refer- 
ence simply  to  the  amount  of  work  they  can  perform. 
But  again,  so  long  as  these  men  are  spared  to  remain 
in  conjunction  at  the  head  of  the  system,  they  will  do 
much  to  preserve  in  it  a  compactness,  a  judiciousness 
of  distribution,  a  commensurateness  of  agents  to 
their  respective  work  and  to  one  another,  and  a  com- 
prehensiveness of  scheme  greatly  conducive  both  to 
rapidity  of  execution  and  to  that  uniformity  and  con- 
sistency of  principle  in  the  proceedings  which  is  of 
great  importance  in  a  cause  that,  in  provoking  the 
conflict  with  so  mighty  a  league  of  iniquities,  has  need 
to  be  in  harmony  within  itself.  Add  to  this,  that  the 
high  example  of  these  leaders  is  forming  a  standard 
for  their  younger  coadjutors,  who  will  be  the  better 
qualified  to  become  their  successors,  the  larger  the 
scale  is  on  which  they  behold  their  manner  of  opera- 
tion. 

Now,  while  there  is  no  adding  to  the  length  of  these 
invaluable  lives,  it  is  possible  to  make,  if  we  may  so 
express  it,  an  addition  to  their  breadth.  That  is,  it  is 
possible  for  these  men's  minds  and  their  system  to  be 
brought  into  action  on  a  larger  amount  of  materials, 
and  therefore  over  a  space  both  morally  and  locally 
more  extended.  And  great  stress  is  to  be  laid  on  the 
consideration  that  more  copious  aid  supplied  during 
their  life  would  be,  not  simply  so  much  more  of 
means  put  in  action,  to  produce  an  addition  of  effect 
proportioned  to  the  value  of  those  means  considered 


186  THE    GLORY    OF   THE    AGE  ; 

absolutely,  but  means  put  in  action  according  to  a 
ratio  of  force  peculiar  to  a  transient  conjuncture,  the 
like  of  which  can  not  exist  again ;  such  enlarged  aid 
would  serve  the  cause  in  the  magnified  proportion  of 
these  men's  pre-eminence  of  adaptedness  to  serve  it. 

Nor  is  it  any  disparagement,  by  anticipation,  to  the 
zeal  and  talent  which  we  are  confident  the  Supreme 
Head  of  the  Church  will  appoint  in  long  succession  to 
this  work,  when  we  represent  the  special  importance 
of  aiding  it  in  this  particular  stage,  on  the  ground 
that  a  combination  of  men,  uniting  the  advantage  of  a 
patriarchal  priority  in  time,  with  individual  endow- 
ments so  distinguished,  and  with  such  complete  con- 
formity of  agencies,  constituting,  as  it  were,  a  great 
intellectual  machine,  can  hardly  ever  be  equaled  in 
the  power  of  making  the  most  efficient  application  of 
whatever  means  shall  be  supplied. 

The  right  policy,  in  this  case,  is  the  same  as  that 
which  would  impel  a  state,  engaged  in  some  ambitious 
enterprise,  to  push  its  military  operations  most  earn- 
estly, and  with  every  practicable  reinforcement, 
during  the  last  campaign  in  which  those  operations 
could  probably  have  the  advantage  of  being  directed 
by  an  unbroken  band  of  veterans  trained  in  conjunc- 
tion to  victory  in  the  service. 

And  even  as  regarding  these  men  themselves,  .will- 
ing, like  St.  Paul,  to  forego,  if  it  might  be  put  at 
their  option,  a  more  speedy  emancipation  from  their 
toils  to  the  final  rest,  and  to  labor  on  to  the  last  pe- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  187 

riod  of  exhausted  nature,  it  seems  due  from  our  sym- 
pathy and  gratitude  to  wish,  that  if  death  should  not 
deny  them  the  time,  the  Christian  pubhc  should  not 
refuse  them  the  means  for  advancing  the  introductory- 
process  of  the  great  work  to  a  point  where  they 
would  be  perfectly  willing  to  bid  it  adieu.  That  sup- 
posed limit  of  their  Christian  ambition  is  not  altogether 
an  imaginary  one.  Elijah's  chariot,  sent  to  bear  them 
away,  would  not  inspire  in  them  such  joy,  in  quitting 
the  world,  as  to  know  that  the  most  important  parts 
of  the  revelation  of  God  had  been  brought  to  speak 
in  every  considerable  language  of  Asia. 

But  at  all  events,  they  will  depart  with  the  delight 
of  knowing  that  their  distinguished  lot  on  earth  has 
been  to  open  the  way,  in  an  important  sense,  to  the 
region  whither  they  are  going,  for  a  countless  multi- 
tude, many  of  whom  they  will  be  assured  are  to  fol- 
low them,  while  they  will  rejoice  to  have  staid  long 
enough  to  see  the  evinced  and  completed  efficacy  of 
their  appointment  as  evangelists  in  some  that  are 
gone  before  them.  They  will  know  that  by  the  cause 
in  which  they  have  lived  and  labored,  and  are  dying, 
a  new  mode  of  the  divine  attention,  a  greater  measure 
of  the  divine  interest,  has  been  drawn  and  must  re- 
main fixed  in  benignant  radiance  upon  a  formerly  es- 
tranged and  desolate  tract  of  the  world  ;  inasmuch  as 
wherever  there  are  faithful  witnesses  to  the  truth,  re- 
penting sinners,  and  pagans  making  sacrifices  of  the 
idols  to  which  they  had  offered  sacrifice,  and  com- 


188  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

mencing  in  the  name  of  Christ  a  new  hfe,  amidst 
prayers  and  praises  in  languages  which  never  ad- 
dressed the  Almighty  before,  there  is  (speaking  rever- 
ently) something  to  necessitate  toward  that  spot  a  far 
more  special  emanation  of  favor  and  providence  from 
Heaven  than  when  that  moral  waste  contained  nothing 
related  to  God.  If  there  were  but  one  panicle  there 
of  such  new  and  sacred  existence,  Heaven  must  con- 
tinue in  communication  with  the  spot  where  tliere  is 
something  so  much  its  own,  till  it  became  extinct,  or 
were  resumed  to  the  sky.  How  happy  then  if  there 
shall  be  there  an  augmentation,  every  day,  of  what 
thus  bears  a  special  relation  to  God,  to  become  a 
continually  mightier  attraction  of  the  divine  benignity 
thitherward,  till  at  length  the  language  of  prophecy 
shall  be  fulfilled,  "Behold,  the  tabernacle  of  God  is 
with  men,  and  He  will  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall 
be  His  people,  and  God  himself  shall  be  with  them, 
and  be  their  God." 

In  a  confidence  of  a  progressive  prevalence  of  the 
gracious  dispensation  of  which  we  think  we  see  the 
commencement,  it  anight  be  permitted  to  indulge  for 
a  moment  in  the  contemplation  of  India  as  in  a  future 
age,  in  which  distant  period  we  can  in  a  measure 
conceive  what  will  be  the  reflections  of  a  devout  ob- 
server, regarding  the  scene  in  reference  to  the  past. 
With  the  picture  on  his  imagination  of  India  as  the 
missionaries  will  have  recorded  that  they  found  it, 
and  as  many  other  preserved  authentic  descriptions 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT  OF    MISSIONS.  189 

will  agree  with  them  in  representing  it,  he  may  look 
over  the  ample  region,  to  wonder  what  is  become 
of  that  direful  element  which  was  once  perceived  per- 
vading and  corrupting  the  whole  wide  diffusion  of 
mental  and  moral  existence,  bringing  out  to  view,  as 
it  were  in  a  darkness  visible  of  depravity,  the  souls  of 
men  conspicuously  through  their  less  sable  exterior. 
The  dusky  visages,  the  attire,  the  structure  of  habita- 
tions, and  the  grand  features  of  nature  will  be  seen 
the  same ;  but  a  horrid  something,  composed  of  lies, 
and  crimes,  and  curses,  and  woes,  that  did  rest  in 
deadly  possession  over  all  the  land,  will  be  broken  up 
and  gone.  Where  has  a  place  been  found  for  what 
occupied  for  ages  after  ages  so  many  cities,  and  villages, 
and  houses,  and  minds  ?  What  tempest  has  driven 
it  away  ?  What  presence  has  been  here  which  that 
presence  could  not  abide  ?  Was  it  that  Spirit  in  awe 
of  whom  eternal  night  vanished  at  the  creation  of  the 
world  ? 

He  may  look  from  the  southern  shore  toward  the 
sublime  mountain-boundary  of  the  region  on  the 
north,  and  reflect  what  a  scene  it  was  to  confront 
Heaven,  in  all  this  breadth,  with  deities,  and  doctrines, 
and  devotions  detestable  to  the  true  God ;  each  indi- 
vidual of  unnumbered  miUions  being  infatuated  and 
busied  by  notions  and  practices,  not  one  of  which 
could  have  been  in  existence  but  by  the  fall  of  our 
nature.  But  how  glorious  for  that  reflecting  observer 
to  feel  it  verified  to  him  that  this  is  but  a  vision  of 


190  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

the  past,  and  that,  departing  like  a  dream  Nvhen  one 
awakes,  it  leaves  him  in  view  of  a  bright  and  blessed 
reality.  How  he  will  exult  in  the  palpable  evidence 
that  the  Son  of  God  has  spread  His  dominion  from 
those  shores  to  those  mountains  ;  that  the  oracles  of 
truth  have  taken  place  of  the  most  silly,  and  loath- 
some, and  monstrous  legends  with  which  the  father 
of  lies  ever  made  contemptuous  sport  of  the  folly  of 
his  dupes ;  and  that  the  new  religion  admitted  in 
faith  has  crowned  itself  and  its  believers  with  all  its 
appropriate  virtues.  When  joining  with  them  in  ex- 
ercises of  worship  to  the  true  God,  he  may  have  short 
lapses  of  the  mind  into  a  view  of  the  past,  presented 
in  vivid  images  of  the  fantastic  fooleries  and  the  orgies 
that  once  celebrated  the  infatuation  which  reigned  as 
religion  in  the  people,  on  the  very  same  spot,  as  attested 
by  some  relic  of  the  ruins  of  a  temple,  and  he  will  re- 
cover from  such  brief  alienation  of  thought  to  verify  the 
fact  that  he  actually  is  among  persons  reverently  call- 
ing on  God  in  the  name  of  Christ.  That  disease  of 
the  soul  will  be  gone  that  exhibits  itself  in  alternate 
lethargy  and  raving.  The  charities  of  humanity,  re- 
stored among  them,  will  show  why  it  was  that  their 
ancestors  could  look  upon,  or  even  cause,  the  death 
of  relatives  and  friends  with  stockish  indifference. 
And  finally,  he  will  see  the  effect  of  that  which  mis- 
sionaries are  seeking  to  promote  among  them,  in  the 
manner  in  which  the  death  of  Christianized  Hindoos 
will  differ  from  that  sullen  quiet,  that  stoicism  with- 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  191 

out  mag-naniniity,  with  which  the  pagan  Hindoo  sub- 
mits to  fate. 

And  if  we  might,  for  a  moment,  entertain  so  im- 
probable an  idea,  as  that  this  observer  and  comparer 
should  be  uninformed  of  the  general  course  of  means 
and  operation,  through  which  the  Almighty  Spirit 
had  accomplished  this  great  change,  we  can  suppose 
his  conjectures  on  the  subject  to  be  much  too  magnif- 
icent. How  came  thousands  of  temples  to  be  sur- 
rendered to  the  decay  of  time  or  the  violence  of  di- 
lapidation, an  infinity  of  idols  to  be  demolished,  a 
mythology  and  ritual,  involving  the  whole  life  and 
being  of  the  human  multitude,  to  be  exploded,  the 
powers  of  Brahmins  and  priests  to  be  annihilated,  a 
whole  intellectual  and  moral  system  to  be  supplanted 
by  its  opposite  ?  Might  not  such  questions  put  his  mind 
on  the  effort  to  imagine  the  most  extraordinary  modes 
of  divine  interposition  ?  He  might  fancy,  perhaps, 
that  some  great  convulsion  of  nature  had  contributed 
to  the  overthrow  of  so  many  structures,  forming  the 
glory  and  the  fortresses  of  superstition ;  that  portent- 
ous phenomena,  bearing  a  menacing  aspect  upon  the 
•pagan  rites,  had  been  displayed  in  the  heavens;  that 
cotemporary  miracles,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
had  attested  the  record  of  the  ancient  ones ;  or  that 
some  peculiarity  of  temporal  good  fortune,  frequently 
attending  the  converts,  had  marked  them  out  to  the 
gross  apprehension  of  the  idolaters  as  favorites  of  the 
Power  that  governs  the  world.     And  might  he  sur- 


192  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

mise  in  addition,  that  the  foreign  state,  which  had 
conquered  Hindoostan,  must  have  systematically  lent, 
during  the  acquisition  and  possession,  its  whole  influ- 
ence arising  from  conquest  and  dominion,  to  promote 
Christianity  by  every  expedient  short  of  force  ? 

No,  he  might  be  told,  you  see,  in  all  this  glorious 
view,  nothing  which  is  tt)  be  referred  to  any  such 
causes.  The  work  began  in  some  of  the  humblest 
movements  that  ever  pointed  to  a  great  object,  move- 
ments in  which  the  actors,  perhaps,  owed  their  tolera- 
tion to  contempt.  A  train  of  ideas  was  excited  in  the 
minds  of  some  individuals  respecting  the  prophecies 
relative  to  the  heathen  nations.  Their  conversations 
about  these  with  their  religious  friends,  led  to  meet- 
ings, prayers,  little  arrangements  of  co-operation,  and 
slender  contributions  of  money.  A  gradual  extension 
of  these  measures  resulted  in  the  sending  of  several 
zealous  men,  by  means  of  conveyance  marked  with 
the  disfavor  of  the  governing  authorities,  to  begin  the 
experiment.  It  was  commenced  under  appearances 
very  far  from  resembling  Constantine's  pretended 
vision  of  a  cross  in  the  clouds,  inscribed  as  the  sign 
of  victory  ;  or  from  recalling  to  mind  the  accounts 
of  pagan  priests  of  other  ages  having  been  affrighted 
by  the  trembling  of  their  fanes  accompanied  by  fearful 
voices  from  their  recesses,  announcing  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  solemn  abode  by  the  deities.  Had  these 
servants  of  Christ  taken  up  their  design  on  any  con- 
dition of  the  intervention  of  preternatural  omens  and 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF   MISSIONS.  193 

instrumentality,  the  only  dictate  of  their  experi- 
ence, througli  every  stage,  would  have  been  to  lay  it 
down.  But,  wild  as  they  were  accounted,  both  the 
promoters  in  England  and  the  agents  in  the  East, 
they  had  entertained  no  presumptions  which  could 
lead  to  the  conclusion  of  its  not  being  worth  while  to 
persevere,  and  to  enjoin  on  their  successors  an  inter- 
minable perseverance,  in  the  trial  of  what  the  Al- 
mighty should  see  fit  to  accomplish  at  length  by 
means  of  the  diffusion  of  the  Bible,  and  a  never-tired 
repetition  of  missonary  journeys,  addresses,  and  con- 
ferences, with  the  co-operating  effect  of  schools,  and 
writings  on  religion.  This  economy  of  plain  expedi- 
ents (it  may  be  supposed  to  be  said  to  the  future 
admirer  of  the  transformation),  these  operations,  so 
httle  related  to  poetry  or  prodigy,  or  to  the  wild 
ardor  of  fanaticism,  went  on  in  augmenting  vigor, 
while  those  who  had  commenced  them  sunk,  one  after 
another,  in  the  dust.  On  their  tombs  their  successors 
devoted  themselves  to  prosecute  the  same  labors  of 
the  holy  war.  Converts  from  heathenism,  in  still 
greater  numbers  every  year,  were  brought  in  as  cap- 
tives, but  to  go  out  vmder  the  oath  of  hostility  against 
that  of  which  they  and  their  ancestors  had  been  the 
slaves.  The  succeeding  generation  of  the  Christians 
of  the  West  were  happy  to  continue  from  that  quarter 
their  alliance  and  aid  in  the  mightier  progress  of  a 
cause,  which  their  ancestors  had  begun  in  so  diminu- 
tive a  form,  committing  in  faith  and  hope  its  success 
9 


194  THE    GLORY    OF    THE    AGE  ; 

to  God.  The  influence  of  that  Sovereign  Spirit  has 
descended  in  a  progressive  increase  of  efficacy  far 
more  than  proportioned  to  the  enlargement  of  the 
system  of  means ;  and  so  it  has  come  to  pass  (it 
mig]it  be  said  to  the  future  admirer),  that  you  can 
exult  in  the  disappearance  from  the  -world  of  one 
mighty  form  of  evil,  against  which  the  Christians  of 
a  past  age  had  to  maintain  a  long  hostility. 

As  to  us,  and  our  period  of  time,  there  is  this 
grand  form  of  moral  evil  standing  boldly  forward  in 
possession  of  a  large  part  of  our  world.  But  this  is 
only  one  of  the  forms  in  which  that  worst  enemy 
evinces  a  powerful  and  dreadful  presence.  We  must, 
or  we  are  ruined,  be  kept  in  an  habitual  and  alarming 
sense  of  the  fact,  that  the  one  thinfr  in  the  creation 
which  surpasses  all  others  as  an  object  for  hatred,  is 
here  amidst  us,  and  all  around,  in  many  diversities  of 
malignant  existence  ;  and  with  all  of  them  it  is  our 
vocation  to  be  at  enmity  and  war.  My  brethren,  it 
were  in  vain  to  seek  to  escape  from  the  condition  of 
our  place  in  the  dominions  of  God.  A  mind  of  wan- 
dering and  melancholy  thought,  impatient  of  the  griev- 
ous realities  of  our  state,  may  at  some  moments  almost 
breathe  the  wish  that  we  had  been  a  different  order 
of  beings,  in  another  dwelling-place  than  this,  and  ap- 
pointed on  a  different  service  to  the  Almighty.  In 
vain !  Here  still  we  are,  to  pass  the  first  part  of  our 
existence  in  a  world  where  it  is  impossible  to  be  at 
peace,  because  there  has  come  into  it  a  mortal  enemy 


OR,    THE    SPIRIT    OF    MISSIONS.  195 

to  all  that  live  in  it.  Amidst  the  darkness  that  vails 
from  us  the  state  of  the  universe,  Ave  would  willingly 
be  persuaded  that  this  our  world  may  be  the  only  re- 
gion (except  that  of  penal  justice)  where  the  cause  of 
evil  is  permitted  to  maintain  a  contest.  Here  perhaps 
may  be  almost  its  last  encampment,  where  its  pro- 
longed power  of  hostility  may  be  suffered  in  order  to 
give  a  protracted  display  of  the  manner  of  its  ap- 
pointed destruction.  Here  our  lot  is  cast,  on  a 
ground  so  awfully  pre-occupied;  a  calamitous  dis- 
tinction !  but  yet  a  sublime  one,  if  thus  we  may  ren- 
der to  the  Eternal  King  a  service  of  a  more  arduous 
kind  than  it  is  possible  to  the  inhabitants  of  any  other 
world  than  this  to  render  Him ;  and  if  thus  we  may 
be  trained,  through  devotion  and  conformity  to  the 
Celestial  Chief  in  this  warfare,  to  the  final  attainment 
of  what  He  has  promised,  in  so  many  illustrious  forms, 
to  him  that  overcometh.  We  shall  soon  leave  the  re- 
gion where  so  much  is  in  rebellion  against  our  God. 
But  we  shall  go  where  all  that  pass  from  our  world 
must  present  themselves  as  from  battle,  or  be  denied 
to  mingle  in  the  eternal  joys  and  triumphs  of  the 
conquerors. 


GOD   INVISIBLE. 


GOD    INVISIBLE. 


[This  ingenious  sketch,  on  a  subject  in  which  the  largest 
intellect  is  almost  lost,  is  by  the  author  of  the  foregoing  Es- 
say, and  was  first  published  in  the  London  New  Baptist  Mis- 
cellany.] 

Much  is  seeing,  feeling  man  actuated  by  the  objects 
around  him.  All  his  powers  are  roused,  impelled, 
directed,  by  impressions  made  on  his  sensitive  organs  ; 
yet  objects  of  sense  have  only  a  definite  force  upon 
him.  A  hundred  weight  crushes  a  man's  strength  to 
a  certain  degree,  and  no  more :  he  sustains  and  bears 
it  away.  On  the  edge  of  the  ocean  he  may  tremble 
at  the  vast  expanse,  but  he  tries  tlie  depth  near  the 
shore,  and  finds  it  but  a  few  feet,  and  no  longer  fears 
to  enter  it.  The  waves  can  not  overtop  his  head  ;  or, 
is  it  deep?  he  can  swim,  and  no  longer  regards  it 
with  fear.  Nay,  he  builds  a  ship,  and  makes  this  tre- 
mendous ocean  his  servant,  wields  its  vastness  for  his 
own  use,  dives  to  its  deep  bottom  to  rob  it  of  its  treas- 
ures, or  makes  its  surface  convey  him  to  distant 
shores.    A  much  smaller  object  shall  affect  him  more, 


200  GOD    INVISIBLE. 

■when  his  senses  are  less  distinctly  acted  upon,  but  his 
imagination  is  somewhat  aroused.  When  he  travels 
in  the  dark,  he  starts  at  a  slight  but  indistinct  noise ; 
he  knows  not  but  it  may  be  a  wild  beast  lurking,  or  a 
robber  ready  to  seize  on  him.  Could  he  have  distinct- 
ly seen  what  alarmed  him,  he  had  undauntedly  passed 
on ;  it  was  only  the  moving  of  the  leaves  waved  gently 
by  the  wind.  He  stops,  he  considers  well,  for  he 
hears  the  sound  of  water  falling ;  a  gleam  from  its 
foaming  surface  sparkles  in  his  eye,  but  he  can  not  tell 
how  near  to  it,  or  how  distant ;  how  exactly  it  might 
be  in  his  path ;  how  tremendously  deep  the  abyss  into 
which  he  may  fall  at  the  next  step.  Had  it  been  day- 
light, could  he  have  examined  it  thoroughly,  he  had 
then  passed  it  without  notice ;  it  is  only  the  rill  of  a 
small  ditch  in  the  roadside ;  his  own  foot  could  have 
stopped  the  trickling  current. 

This  effect  of  indistinctness  rousing  the  imagination 
is  finely  depicted  in  Job  iv.  14.  Eliphaz  describes  it 
thus :  *'  Fear  came  upon  me  and  trembling,  which 
made  all  my  bones  to  shake.  Then  a  spirit  passed 
before  my  face ;  the  hair  of  my  flesh  stood  up :  it 
stood  still,  but  I  could  not  discern  the  form  thereof," 
The  senses  in  this  description  are  but  slightly  affected : 
the  eye  could  not  discern  any  specific  form,  the  touch 
could  not  examine  the  precise  nature  of  the  object ; 
the  imagination  therefore  had  full  scope,  the  mind  was 
roused  beyond  the  power  of  sensible  objects  to  stimu- 
late it,  and  the  body  felt  an  agitation  greater  than  if 


GOD    INVISIBLE.  201 

its  senses  had  been  more  fully  acted  upon.  "He 
trembled,  the  hairs  of  his  flesh  stood  up.  He  could 
not  discern  the  form,"  it  might  therefore  be  terrific  in 
its  shape  or  tremendous  in  its  size.  "  It  stood  still," 
as  if  to  do  something  to  him ;  to  speak ;  perhaps  to 
smite  or  to  destroy !  And  how  could  he  guard 
against  that  which  he  could  not  see,  could  not  tell 
whence  or  what  it  was ;  that  which,  from  what  he 
could  discover,  and  still  more  from  what  he  could  not 
discover,  seemed  to  be  no  mortal  substance  to  which 
he  was  accustomed,  and  with  which,  with  care  and 
courage,  he  might  deal  safely ;  but  a  spirit  utterly 
beyond  his  impression,  having  unknown  power  to  im- 
press even  him,  who  can  tell  in  what  degree  ?  The 
certainty  of  an  object  so  near  him,  joined  to  the  un- 
certainty of  what  might  be  his  powers,  intentions,  and 
natural  operations,  impressed  him  deeply  with  awe, 
expectation,  and  anxiety.  How  absurd,  then,  how 
contrary  to  all  their  feelings  in  other  cases,  is  the  con- 
duct of  infidels  who  affect  to  despise  God,  to  deny 
His  existence  because  they  can  not  see  Him,  or,  with- 
out affecting  this,  do  actually  forget  and  do  Him  de- 
spite, by  occasion  of  this  circumstance  !  Men  who  can 
be  appalled  at  some  distant  danger,  and  grow  cour- 
ageous at  what  is  near  at  hand — who  tremble  at  a 
fellow-man  or  crawling  reptile,  and  only  show  hardi- 
hood when  their  foe  is  Almighty. 

Without  inquiring  what  Eliphaz  saw,  let  us  apply 
these  ideas  to  the  Supreme  Being ;  let  us  meditate  on 
9* 


202  GOD    INVISIBLE. 

an  object  of  infinitely  greater,  nearer  importance — 
"the  invisible  God,"  the  most  impressively  important 
because  invisible.  Let  us,  for  a  moment,  suppose  the 
contrary  to  be  the  case — suppose  the  Deity  to  be  the 
object  of  our  senses — He  then  loses  much  of  His  maj- 
esty— He  becomes  fixed  to  one  spot,  that  in  which  lue 
can  see  Him.  He  must  be  distant  from  many  other 
places,  and^  when  revealing  Himself  in  other  places, 
must  be  far  distant  from  us,  even  at  a  time  when  we 
must  need  His  presence.  Nay,  we  should  begin  to 
compute  Him;  to  philosophize  upon  and  attempt  ex- 
periments with  Him.  Were  He  vast  as  the  starry 
heavens,  we  could  measure  Him;  bright  as  yonder 
sun,  we  could  contrive  to  gaze  at  Him ;  energetic  as 
the  vivid  lightning,  we  could  bring  Him  down  to  play 
around  us.     In  no  form  can  we  conceive  of  His  beino- 

o 

an  object  of  sense,  but  we  sink  Him  to  a  creature, 
give  Him  some  definable  shape,  reduce  Him  to  a  man 
or  mere  idol,  and  we  have  need  to  provide  Him  a  tem- 
ple made  with  hands  for  His  accommodation. 

If  indeed  there  were  any  doubt  of  His  existence 
(but  that  man  is  incapable  of  reasoning  Avho  reasons 
thus),  there  are  proofs  enough  that  He  is  at  our  right 
hand,  though  we  do  not  see  Him  ;  that  He  works  at 
our  left  hand,  though  we  can  not  behold  Him.  In- 
stead of  asking,  with  a  sneer  of  doubt.  Where  is  He  ? 
or  carelessly  thinking  thus :  Shall  God  see  ?  a  much 
more  rational  method  is  with  awe  and  reverence  to 
say,  **  Whither  shall  I  flee  from  Thy  presence  ?  Thou 


GOD    INVISTBLE.  203 

hast  beset  me  behind  and  before,  and  laid  Thine  hand 
upon  me."  Could  an}'  supposition  take  place  even  of 
His  momentary  absence — that  He  was  far  off,  or  on 
a  journey,  or  asleep,  and  must  needs  be  awakened — 
it  might  be  alleged  to  sanction  the  careless,  provided 
they  were  aware  of  His  absence,  or  knew  the  time  of 
His  drowsiness  or  distance ;  but  an  omnipresent  Al- 
mighty ought  to  fill  us  with  seriousness,  and  the  un- 
certainty of  His  operations,  when,  how,  and  where  He 
will  work,  should  fill  us  with  deep,  lasting,  and  con- 
stant awe. 

He  exists — the  thought  makes  a  temple  in  every 
place  I  may  be  in ;  to  realize  it,  is  to  begin  actual 
worship  ;  whatever  I  may  be  about,  to  indulge  it  is 
to  make  all  other  existence  fade  away.  Amid  the 
roar  of  mirth  I  hear  only  His  voice ;  in  the  glitter  of 
dissipation  I  see  only  His  brightness ;  in  the  midst 
of  business  I  can  do  nothing  but  pra}'.  He  is  pres- 
ent !  what  may  He  not  see  ?  The  actions  of  my 
hands  He  beholds  !  the  voice  of  my  words  He  hears ! 
the  thoughts  of  my  heart  He  discerns  !  Could  I  see 
Him,  I  might  on  this  side  guard  against  His  penetra- 
ting eye,  or  on  the  other  side  act  something  in  secret, 
safe  from  His  inspection  ;  but  present,  without  my 
being  able  to  discern  Him,  I  ought  to  be  watchful 
eveiy  way  ;  the  slightest  error  may  fill  us  with  awful 
apprehensions.  Even  now,  says  conscience,  He  may 
be  preparing  His  vengeance,  whetting  His  glittering 
sword,  or  drawing  to  a  head  the  arrows  of  destruction. 


204  GOD    INVISIBLE. 

Could  my  eye  see  His  movements,  I  might  be  upon 
my  guard  ;  might  flee  to  some  shelter,  or  shrink  away 
from  the  blow  ;  but,  a  foe  so  near,  and  yet  so  indis- 
cernible, may  well  alarm  me,  lest  the  act  of  iniquity 
meet  with  an  immediate  reward ;  the  blasphemous 
prayer  for  damnation  receive  too  ready  an  answer 
from  His  hot  thunderbolt! 

He  is  a  Spirit !  what  can  He  not  do  ?  Vast  are  His 
powers,  quick  His  discernments,  invisible  His  opera- 
tions !  No  sword  can  reach  Him,  no  shield  of  brass 
can  protect  against  Him,  no  placid  countenance  de- 
ceive Him,  no  hypocritical  supplications  impose  upon 
Him.  He  is  in  my  inmost  thoughts — in  every  voli- 
tion ;  He  supports  the  negotiating  principle  while  it 
determines  on  its  rebelUons,  or  plans  some  mode  by 
which  to  elude  His  all-penetrating  perception.  Vain 
is  every  attempt  at  evasion  or  resistance.  *'  God  is  a 
Spirit;"  is  present  every  moment,  surrounds  every 
object,  watches  my  steps  and  waits  upon  me,  though 
I  can  not  discern  His  form.  His  measure.  His  power, 
or  direct  His  movements.  I  see  Him  before  my  face 
in  the  bright  walks  of  nature,  but  I  can  not  discern 
His  form.  The  rich  landscape  shows  Him  good,  wise, 
and  bounteous :  but  how  bounteous,  good,  or  wise, 
who,  from  the  richest  landscape,  can  be  able  to  guess  ? 
The  brilliant  sun  gives  a  glimpse  of  His  brightness ; 
the  vast  starry  concave  shows  His  immensity  ;  but 
how  bright,  how  immense,  it  were  impossible  to  say. 
Hark!  He  speaks  in  that  bursting  thundei',  or  He 


GOD    INVISIBLE.  205 

moves  in  that  crushing*  earthquake,  He  shines  in  that 
blazing  comet.  So  much  I  can  easily  discern,  but 
God  is  still  far  beyond  my  comprehension.  I  see 
nothing  but  the  hidings  of  His  power;  Himself  is 
still  unknown. 

He  guides  the  affairs  of  providence.  I  see  Him  be- 
fore my  face,  but  I  can  not  behold  His  form.  Who 
but  He  could  have  raised  Pharaoh — the  Nebuchad- 
nezzar of  ancient  or  modem  times  ?  Who  but  He 
could  have  rooted  up  a  firmly-fixed  throne,  and  poised 
a  mighty  nation  upon  the  slender  point  of  a  stripling's 
energies  ?  I  have  seen  Him  pass  before  me  in  my 
own  concerns,  leading  me  in  a  path  I  did  not  know, 
stopping  me  when  on  the  verge  of  some  destruction, 
filling  my  exhausted  stores,  and  soothing  my  wearied 
mind  to  sweet  serenity.  I  could  not  but  say,  "  This 
is  the  Lord's  doing,  it  is  marvelous  in  my  eyes:"  but 
I  can  not  discern  the  form  ;  I  know  not  what  He  will 
next  do,  nor  dare  I  walk  with  presumptuous  steps,  or 
repose  with  self-complacent  gratulation,  and  say,  "  My 
mountain  stands  strong,  I  shall  never  be  moved."  He 
hides  His  face  for  a  moment,  and  I  am  troubled  ;  He 
withdraws  His  hand,  and  I  die. 

I  see  a  spirit  passing  before  me,  I  hear  His  voice  in 
the  secret  recesses  ;  I  find  that  there  is  a  God,  that 
He  is  near,  that  He  stands  full  in  view,  with  appalling 
indistinctness,  so  that  I  tremble,  and  the  hairs  of  my 
flesh  stand  up  ;  yet  I  can  not  discern  the  form.  I  know 
not  what  affrights,  stops,  impresses,  crushes  me.    Com- 


206  GOD    INVISIBLE. 

pany  I  liate,  for  it  neither  dispels  my  sensations  nor 
harmonizes  with  them.  Sohtude  I  dread;  for  the  in- 
visible presence  is  there  seen,  and  the  unknown  God 
is  there  felt  in  all  His  terrifying  influence.  To  deny 
that  some  one  is  acting  upon  me,  must  be  to  deny 
that  I  see,  feel,  am  anxious.  Could  I  tell  what,  or 
who,  I  might  call  the  Avisdom  of  man  to  my  assist- 
ance ;  but  it  is  the  unknowable,  yet  well  known  ;  the 
indiscernible,  yet  surely  seen  ;  the  incomprehensible, 
intangible,  yet  fully  understood  and  ever-present  God, 
that  supports  my  trembling  frame,  and  meets  the 
warmest  wishes  of  my  too  daring  mind  ;  the  resolute 
determinations,  inefficacious  exertions,  and  the  stub- 
born submission  of  an  unwilling  soul. 

Ah !  let  this  present  Invisible  encircle  me  with  His 
mercy,  defend  me  with  His  power,  fill  me  with  His 
fear,  and  save  me  by  His  almighty  grace.  Then, 
thouorh  I  discern  not  His  form,  I  shall  be  conscious  of 
His  presence,  and  the  delightful  consciousness  shall 
fill  me  with  reverence  indeed,  but  not  make  my  flesh  . 
to  tremble.  He  shall  soothe  my  sorrows,  inspire  my 
hopes,  give  me  confidence  in  danger,  and  supphes  in 
every  necessity.  The  consciousness  of  His  nearness, 
approbation,  and  mercy,  shall  enable  me  to  endure 
like  Moses,  as  seeing  Him  who  is  INVISIBLE. 


THE    END. 


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